There has been an appreciable growth in cross-border cooperation (CBC) structures over the last three decades in Europe, especially within the European Union (EU). If the legal instruments developed by the Council of Europe in the 1980s account for the so-called second wave of CBC structures, the third can be linked to the impulse provided by Interreg (initially a ‘Community initiative’; today a goal of EU Cohesion Policy), which saw a multiplication of such structures. This has provoked the criticism of scholars, concerned by the apparent opportunistic nature of many of these structures, some (most?) of them, they claim, serving solely to capture Interreg funds and lacking any proper governance, funding and/or administrative systems, among other attributes.
However, in 2006, a Regulation making possible European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation (EGTCs) was passed (amended in 2013), providing for the institution of more stable governance structures. The purpose of this session is to discuss the extent to which this has subsequently facilitated the development of a new generation of CBC structures and to reflect on ongoing discussions – see, for example, the Cross-Border Review and B-Solutions – about the persistent barriers associated with borders within the EU. Indeed, since 2015, the creation of a new legal mechanism to overcome obstacles to CBC – one that is more ambitious in scope than the EGTCs – has been debated. This session welcomes critical research findings examining CBC structures at all (including mismatching) scales – Euroregions, Eurodistricts, Eurocities, transboundary protected areas, etc. – irrespective of their administrative/governance situation (i.e. if recognised as EGTCs or not). Additionally, recent discussions centred on EU Cohesion Policy for 2021–2027 have welcomed the use of the concept of the ‘functional region’, identified in the Territorial Agenda 2030 as “often break[ing] with existing administrative delineations” and which, as such, might represent new structures that can initiate new processes of CBC institutionalisation.
The session is conceived within the framework of the TRANSINTER-A project (code PID2021-126922NB-C22), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Spanish Agency of Research (AEI) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). This project aims to benchmark EU CBC institutionalisation experiences and to transfer the lessons learned to instances of cross-border cooperation along the administrative boundaries/borders between Spain’s Autonomous Communities (either historical nations or regions).

Valerià Paül (1); Juan Manuel Trillo Santamaría (1)
(1) Universidade de Santiago de Compostela

 
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