1201 | | Internal Borders Within European Countries: Can They Be Considered as if They Were International Borders? | Joan Tort (1); Juan Manuel Trillo Santamaría (2)
Most academic research examining territorial borders has focused on international borders, despite the fact that borders are not limited to this sole scale. Indeed, borders are to be found between states, autonomous regions, provinces, counties and/or the administrative and political instances of the distinct government tiers that exist within internationally recognised sovereign countries. These administrative limits have come to be labelled “internal borders” and considered as presenting many of the same obstacles and barriers as those presented by international boundaries/borders. Yet, compared to the well-established framework of European Union (EU) cross-border cooperation – which includes specific funds, such as Interreg, and cross-border governance/government tools, such as the European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation – there is an apparent dearth of cooperation instruments in the case of internal borders.
This session welcomes presentations on internal borders adopting theoretical and methodological perspectives that seek to understand them by analogy with external borders. Studies are especially encouraged of federal countries (e.g. Austria, Belgium, and Germany), semi-federal countries (e.g. Italy and Spain – whose regions present differences in accordance with their special or ordinary statutes and their status as historical nationalities or regions, respectively) and countries that have experienced uneven devolution (e.g. the United Kingdom, as it affects Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but excluding England). Recently, the Covid-19 epidemic has shown that, on certain issues, it is easier for cross-border cooperation to be achieved between neighbouring States – for instance, the Spanish-Portuguese strategy adopted in 2020 – than for such emergencies to be managed by resorting to horizontal territorial cooperation – for example, between Spain’s Autonomous Communities. This session seeks to compile experiences, analyses and proposals not only of the barriers associated with internal borders, but also of the initiatives that have sought to construct bridges across internal borders, identifying existing practices, mechanisms and instruments.
The session is conceived within the framework of the TRANSINTER-D project (code PID2021-126922NB-C21), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Spanish Agency of Research (AEI) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). This project studies Spain’s internal borders and seeks to propose solutions to the dysfunctions apparent in these borderlands, by drawing on findings from research centred on institutionalised EU cross-border cooperation.
Joan Tort (1); Juan Manuel Trillo Santamaría (2)
(1) Universitat de Barcelona, (2) Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
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