Paper Titles & Abstracts

The paper contrasts assumptions in European policy documents of border regions as naturally given due to common geographical, economic or cultural heritage (see Celata & Coletti 2011 for a policy overview) with empirical data on six institutionalized micro-regional cross-border cooperation initiatives at three European borders (Austria/Germany, Hungary/Slovakia and Sweden/Norway). The legal basis for these initiatives varies across cases and over time, but in the paper they are referred to as Euroregions, defined as formalized cooperation initiatives between sub-national authorities (such as local or regional governments), often including private and non-profit actors, located close to a border in two or more countries. The aim of the paper is to map out the territorial boundaries of these Euroregions, from their inception until 2012. The time span therefore varies, from Euroregions starting in the early 1970s to organizations having been in existence for less than a decade. Membership data is used to construct spatial visualizations that show the evolution of the boundaries of these initiatives. Based on this empirical data, the paper argues that institutionalized European territorial cooperation across borders should not be seen as static agents representing set territorial boundaries. Instead, border regions expand and contract as determined by political games, recruitment strategies by Euroregions and development strategies by its members.