Half a Century of Cross-border Cooperation in Europe; Insights from the Cases of the EUREGIO and the EMR
Half a Century of Cross-border Cooperation in Europe; Insights from the Cases of the EUREGIO and the EMR

Summary/Abstract: European Integration has profoundly changed the situation of regions at the internal borders of the European Union. From peripheral regions in a national context they could develop into more central regions in a European context. In this article we analyse the development over a period of more than half a century of two cases. First the very first Euregio created (Twente-Oostgelderland, Westmuensterland and Grafschaft Bentheim) and second the Maas-Rhine region (around Maastricht, Aachen and Liege). The success of their pioneering work has resulted in 1990 in the taking up of cross-border cooperation (INTERREG) in European Cohesion Policy making. Cross-border cooperation is difficult; we describe how the success of our two cases depended on the good interplay of the main actors from the private, public and knowledge sectors. We also show that success depended critically on long-term financial support. We finally show the shift in focus from socio–cultural–economic issues to regional innovation system development.

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