1. Euregions as “borderscape”: stable cross-border regionalism or instable elite phenomenon?
Martin Klatt, PhD.
Associate Professor
Centre of Border Region Studies
Sønderborg

2. Border regions as laboratories for European integration
”State of the art”:
A story of continuing integration in the form of cross-border regions
Institutionalization as European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation
Territorial approach (Scott, Perkmann, Paasi …)
Create cross-border regions, territories
Political motives dominate
”peace building”
Europe of the people
Bottom-up Europeanization

3. Europe of (Cross-Border) Regions?
Keating: regionalization of power is not the aim of EU Regional Policies, nor in the interest of nation states*
Schmitt-Egner: Transnational Regionalism – regions develop cross-border action space
Multi-level governance: Regions and Cross-border Regions have become important players in the EU’s system of multilevel governance
M. Keating: (2008) A Quarter Century of the Europe of Regions, Regional and Federal Studies 18 (5),

4. A new borderscape? ”borderscape”: landscape and border
De- (and re-) borderings have created new borderscapes in Europe
Visual: Schengen borders – but also fences….

5. A Europe of Cross-Border Regions (CBRs)?
Source: Association of European Border Regions

6. Sønderjylland-Schleswig – from territorial to functional?
Region Sønderjylland-Schleswig was founded as a euroregion in 1997
Historic reference to the Duchy of Schleswig
Territorial reference

7. Governance Restructured in 2011 Infocenter
Facilitator for cross-border projects
No clear political function
Singular – or representative?

8. Framework of German-Danish coop.
South-Western Baltic Sea Transregional Area Implementig New Geography (STRING)
Fehmarn Belt Region
Pushed by infrastructure project
Cooperation Schleswig-Holstein – Region South Denmark
Border Triangle
Region Sønderjylland-Schleswig
Interreg Germany-Denmark

9. Best practices: cooperation by bottleneck?
Ambulances: use decreased after establishing Danish facitilies
Rescue helicopter: the same
Cancer treatment: stops January 2017 after establishing Danish facilities
New topic: vocational training (Denmark lacks facilities)

10. Multiple network structures?
Upper Rhine Region
La Grande Région?
Pacific North West
French-Spanish border
Øresund Region (now Greater Copenhagen Skåne Region)

11. Elite structures Social network structures reveal cbc-clusters
The same does Interreg evaluation
Functional integration is lacking – except certain cross-border transport infrastructures (Øresund bridge, Basel Regio S-Bahn)
Cross-border business activities operate mostly outside political cooperation frameworks, market induced

12. Challenges

13. Re-bordering?
National agendas demonstrate the helplessness of (cross-) border regions:
Denmark: against the Swedish controls in the Øresund Region
Schleswig-Holstein: against the Danish controls on the Danish-German border
Bavaria: against stopping the border controls on the German-Austrian border
Austria: preparing for border controls at the Austrian-Italian border
And the people: vast majority usually supports border controls

14. New borderscapes?
Cross-border interaction has increased since Schengen
But:
Fx Danish-German: cross-border traffic is still marginal in relation to domestic interaction (Gutachten Mobilität der Zukunft in Schleswig-Holstein, Rambøll September 2016)
Lack of awareness of euroregional activities
Interreg may as well reproduce borders
Luxemburg, Basel and Geneva Regions are not representative: metropolitan – hinterland regions rather than border regions

15. Challenges Methodology! Benchmarking? Measuring integration?
Explaining power relations in multi-level governance