How to get to grips with the particular integration challenges at the internal borders of the EU?
 

In person: Kapoenstraat 2, Maastricht

or ONLINE
 

In the academic EU governance world, there has been always a vibrant debate about the relationship between the EU and the member states. Research was focusing, for example, on the relationship of national and EU institutions and the negotiations in Brussels (Intergovernalism, Institutionalism). The debate on Multi-Level Governance fostered the idea that policy making is not limited to the bargaining of national governments, but that authority and sovereignty has moved away from national governments not only to the supranational level, but also to subnational levels such as regions and local authorities. However, European Integration in this perspective was and is widely seen as a vertical process, where EU policies and legislation trigger integration from Brussels to the local level. 

Less attention has so far been paid to integration processes at the border of two or more neighboring countries. Typically, even current border studies do not tackle cross-border integration between two neighboring countries as part of EU integration. The first key-note speaker of the workshop, Joachim Beck, Professor and Rektor of the Hochschule Kehl, is an exemption to the rule with his recent publication “Horizontal Integration”. According to Beck, the European border regions perform a specific horizontal integration function. He describes this from the perspective of public administration theory and conceptionalises the policy area of cross-border cooperation in Europe as a horizontal level of integration. He emphasizes, that cross-border governance must also be multi-level governance and enable differentiated, policy-specific approaches for the design of negotiation systems and the practical design of cross-border tasks.

A panel will discuss with him whether and how we can use this analytical approach to describe the current situation of cross-border integration in different parts of the EU and for instance what type of flexible instruments are missing to overcome the well-documented obstacles in different policy sectors.