Abstract
While international activities can be strategic for any type of region, border regions – and especially border regions with minority communities – are particularly inclined to to consider political questions when engaging in such actions. Paradiplomacy and cross-border cooperation allow border regions to take advantage of their geographical position at the margins of the respective states. They can turn this position into opportunities and develop political strategies to increase flows of people, goods, services and capital. At the same time, paradiplomacy can serve as an instrument to promote regional identity and autonomy, as, for example, in the cases of Catalonia and South Tyrol.
This lecture will explain main drivers and challenges of cross-border cooperation of minority autonomous regions, looking at the Italian and Spanish borderlands as specific examples. It will illustrate past tensions between the state and the regions with regard to regional cross-border cooperation and it will show how the European Union and its Regional Policy contributed to a “normalization” of cross-border cooperation in these contested borderlands, investigating the role of EU instruments of cross-border cooperation for minorities and autonomous regions.