Abstract
The Treaty of Lisbon (2009) explicitly added - in Article 3 of the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) and Article 174 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) - the principle of territorial cohesion to the already #existing principles of social and economic cohesion between the EU Member #States. To concretely reach the objective of territorial cohesion, the EU #created – on the one hand - the legal instrument of the “European Grouping for Territorial Cooperation” adopted through regulation n. 1082/2006 (EGTC). #This allows cross - border cooperation between local and regional authorities. #On the other hand, in 2009 a new form of European transnational cooperation #has been introduced, the so called Macro Regional Strategy (MRS). This was #firstly applied to the Baltic Sea Region in order to give to this cross - border #geographical area a coordinated framework in specific policy fields, such as #the environment and the infrastructures. Both concepts - EGTC and MRS - are #based on the fundamental idea of supporting the territorial and cross - border #cooperation between local, regional and national authorities and other #stakeholders. Despite this common aspect, the two instruments differ #profoundly in terms of form, structure and content. While the MRS is to be #considered as a political integrated framework without its own financial #resources, the instrument of the EGTC is based on a stable legal basis. To this #extent, the alpine region - a large geographic area in the heart of Europe #with a longstanding tradition in crossborder cooperation - represents an #interesting practical example with regard to the implementation of these two forms of cooperation across borders. In fact, the countries and regions in the Alpine area are unified through the Alps and face, therefore, common challenges: that is why this “region” is ideally suited to be the ground for experiments regarding transnational tools and strategies.