Bridging borders through institution-building: the EGTC as a facilitator of institutional integration in cross-border regions

ABSTRACT

This article examines cross-border integration at the sub-state level in the frame of a European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC). The EGTC is a supranational and directly applicable EU legal instrument that regulates the creation of cross-border ‘associations' with legal personality between public authorities. Thus, it represents a policy tool that can have an effect on the institutional frame of cross-border cooperation and potentially enhance cross-border institutional integration at the sub-state level. The aim of this article is to examine the potential effect of this EU instrument on cross-border institutional integration by studying the institutional architecture of selected EGTCs. This is done on the basis of an analytical grid that defines elements of a possible integration process based on an institutional-oriented approach. This analytical grid is applied to four case studies: the Eurométropole Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai, the EGTC Ister-Granum, the Pyrenees-Mediterranean Euroregion and the European Region Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino. The empirical analysis shows that despite the considerable improvement of the legal basis for cooperation, the possible effect of the EGTC for further institutional cross-border integration is still rather limited due to a narrow design of institutions and a low level of actor involvement.

KEY WORDS:

• European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation
• cross-border cooperation
• integration
• institutions
• actor involvement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. >In this article, the terms ‘cross-border cooperation' and ‘territorial cooperation' refer to the cooperation between regional and local authorities from different states.

2. >By the end of 2015, more than 50 EGTCs have been created. They are spread all over the EU territory, except for the Nordic countries where cross-border cooperation is already intensively promoted by the Nordic Council.

3. >The Autonomous Community Aragon formally withdrew from the collaboration in the course of this process (García-Álvarez and Trillo-Santamaría 2013: 110).

4. >A shortcoming of the institutional-oriented approach to studying cross-border integration process is that it neglects networks and contacts that are established outside the formal institutional framework. Thus, the findings of the present study could be complemented by a network-oriented study or by surveys among the population in order to compare the findings based on institutional factors with findings deriving from a network analysis or surveys (see, for example, Svensson, 2015).