European Union Cross-Border Cooperation and Conflict Amelioration

Abstract

The relevance of European Union (EU) cross-border cooperation for European border conflict amelioration may be questioned in the contemporary global climate of threat and insecurity posed by forces of 'dark globalisation'. In any case, empirical evidence exposes the limitations of cross-border cooperation in advancing conflict amelioration in some border regions. Nevertheless, in an enlarged EU which encompasses Central and East European member states and reaches out to neighbouring states through cross-border cooperation initiatives, the number of real and potential border conflicts with which it is concerned has risen exponentially. Fortunately, there are cases of EU 'borderscapes' that have adopted a cross-border 'peace-building from below' approach leading to border conflict amelioration. Unfortunately, countervailing pressures on EU cross-border cooperation from border security regimes (principally Schengen), the Eurozone crisis, EU budgetary constraints, the conceptualisation of 'Europe as Empire', and the possible reconfiguration of the EU itself compromises this approach. Therefore, the path of European integration may well shift from one of inter-state peace-building and regional cross-border cooperation after the Second World War, to border conflict and coercion in constituting and reconstituting state borders after the reconfiguration of the EU.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Professors Hastings Donnan and Liam O'Dowd for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks also to the two anonymous referees for their constructive criticisms. All remaining shortcomings are my responsibility.

Funding

The paper draws on research conducted for the project EUBORDERSCAPES (290775) funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme (FP7-SSH-2011-1), Area 4.2.1 The evolving concept of borders.

Notes

European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) represents an EU effort to counteract the re-bordering effect of post-2004 enlargement through cross-border initiatives with some ‘neighbouring’ states including, Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Moldova, Morocco, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Syria, Tunisia and Ukraine. However, ‘neighbourhood’, as used here, includes neighbouring states that are not included in ENP, for example, Russia.

It is important to distinguish between state nationalism and state-seeking nationalism, imperial nationalism and anti-imperial nationalism. Too often the violence associated with nationalism is ascribed solely to the state-seekers and the anti-imperialists.

See the EU FP7 project EUBORDERREGIONS—European Regions, EU External Borders and the Immediate Neighbours. Analysing Regional Development Options through Policies and Practices of Cross-Border Cooperation at http://www.euborderregions.eu.

The Schengen border regime prioritises control of the Schengen Area's external border. Schengen rules involve strengthening external border controls with non-member states and eliminating internal border controls within the Schengen Area. Of all the EU member states only the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland are not required to implement Schengen rules. Bulgaria, Cyprus and Romania have yet to comply with Schengen rules while four non-EU member states—Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland—belong to the Schengen Area.

‘Emotion entrepreneurs’ are commonly understood to be ‘hot nationalists’. However, they can also spring from the ‘banal nationalism’ camp. As John Hutchinson explains, “banal nationalists will become ‘hot’ in defending national cultural distinctiveness, homeland integrity, economic power and political autonomy” (Hutchinson, 2005, p. 147).

http://www.west-eastern-divan.org; accessed 2 November 2012).

http://www.theatreofwitness.org; accessed 2 November 2012).

http://www.qub.ac.uk/cecpa/belfast_sarajevo_part1.html; accessed 2 November 2012).

The Lemon Tree portrays efforts made by a Palestinian woman to prevent her neighbour, the Israeli Defence Minister, from destroying her lemon grove for security reasons. She is observed tending to her grove by the minister's wife and a human bond develops between the two women.

‘Cross-border, cross-community’ denotes projects that involve participants from both sides of the Irish border and from British unionist and Irish nationalist ethno-national communities on the island.

'The EU Pale' is used here to denote an EU geopolitical entity in which security is increasingly emphasised, especially in terms of threats lying beyond it. 'Beyond the Pale' has historical significance. For example, the Pale of Dublin was created in the 14th century to protect an English settlement around the city from an increasingly assertive Irish population 'beyond the Pale'. The Pale of Settlement was an area to the west of Imperial Russia that was created for Jews by Catherine the Great in 1791. However, some Jews were permitted to live 'beyond the Pale'.

According to Mouffe: “If we want to acknowledge on the one side the permanence of the antagonistic dimension of the conflict, while on the other side allowing for the possibility of its 'taming', we need to envisage a third type of relation. This is the type of relation which I have proposed to call 'agonism'. While antagonism is a we/they relation in which the two sides are enemies who do not share any common ground, agonism is a we/they relation where the conflicting parties, although acknowledging that there is no rational solution to their conflict, nevertheless recognise the legitimacy of their opponents. They are 'adversaries' not enemies. This means that, while in conflict, they see themselves as belonging to the same political association, as sharing a common symbolic space within which the conflict takes place. We could say that the task of democracy is to transform antagonism to agonism” (Mouffe, 2005, p. 20). Unlike conflict resolution, which aims for the taming of conflict, conflict amelioration, that is, making a conflict better, can accommodate the shift from antagonism to ‘agonism’.