Cross-border governance in the European Union

Abstract:

This book is part of the Routledge Research in Transnationalism series, which offers a forum for innovative new research intended for high-level specialist readership.

The work is organised over twelve chapters grouped into three parts. Part one 'Governing the absent (non-)border' opens with a chapter on Europe's oldest experiment in cross-border institution building - the Euregio Riijn-Waal on the Dutch-German border. Chapter two addresses the 'non-existence of a borderless and integrated labour market'. The cause of regional governance is championed in chapter three which looks at cross-border governance in the French-Spanish communities of the Pyrenees. Chapter four looks at EUROREGION, formed by the joining of the Belgian regions of Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels Capital with the county of Kent, and the Nord-Pas-de-Calais. The focus of chapter five is the 'Espace Mont Blanc', which sprang from long-standing environmental concerns regarding the future of the mountain as a heritage site.

Chapter six opens part two 'Governing the march', a name taken from history and given to border territories; the chapter addresses the area bordering upon Central and Eastern Europe. Chapter seven looks at Finland-Russia and Germany-Poland-Sweden in a similar vein. Chapter eight considers the 'Northern Dimension' and the regionalism developing along the Baltic borders. The post-national creation of new cross-border 'regions' is examined in chapter nine.

Part three 'Governing the post colonial limes' opens with a chapter dealing with the borderland of Spain and Portugal and the difficulties in developing cross-border cooperation to meet pragmatic needs of the communities - which is both in reality and in metaphorical terms a 'bridge building' exercise. Chapter eleven dissects the governance logic of the nation-state and its imperialist, postcolonial legacy and looks to a new framework of multilevel or networked forms of governance. The final chapter addresses the 'citizen' and 'not-citizen' contradictions arising from the new European border regimes which it claims are mainly re-echoing the colonialism of the past.

The work will interest students and researchers of European Union borders, and those engaged in issues of transnational governance.

Olivier Kramsch is Lecturer, and Barbara Hooper is Research Fellow, both at the Nijmegen Centre for Border Research, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands.