The Maas-Rhein Euregio was founded in the late seventies with the main goal of finding innovative solutions to the economic decline of the mining sector that was at that time troubling the area. After thirty-three years, the Euregio Maas-Rhein is a highly institutionalized organism that collects and tries to reconcile economic, social and environmental interests among its Dutch, Belgian and German components. Nonetheless, the results accomplished since now can be considered modest because of the overwhelming influence of political interests and the consequent lack of participation of normal citizens in the decision-making process.

Since the early 1990s the European Union has accorded special importance to the development of its former internal border regions as potentially key sites of economic dynamism resulting from the economic integration and enlargement of European space (Nijkamp, 1993; Cappelin and Batey, 1993; Krebs and van Geffen, 1994; Handy et al, 1995; Ehlers, 1996; Sidaway, 2001). Building on precedents established in the Benelux countries and along the Dutch-German and Danish-German borders as well as lobbying by the Association of European Border Regions (Scott, 1998), just over one-fifth of Community Initiative funding has been allocated to cross-border cooperation. Thus, with the attainment of EU structural financing capabilities, these cross-border euregios have become eligible since 1990 for INTERREG funds in the co-financing of local cross-border initiatives, involving programs of technology transfer, the construction of transport linkages, transborder industrial training and labour market development, the creation of joint leisure areas, and the establishment of consumer as well as small business advisory services.

Future cross-border planning efforts have also been ensured by the promotion in June, 1997 of the Draft European Spatial Development Perspective. Supported by INTERREG IIc and III, the primary goal of the ESDP is to promote transnational cooperation among Member States’ planning and development agencies as a means of improving the impact of Community policies on spatial development (Nadin and Shaw, 1998; Faludi, 1997). Supported by a purposively “bottom-up” planning approach, the policy assumptions guiding both INTERREG and the ESDP are that increased integration of spatial planning between Member States will contribute to an improved balance of development, resulting in heightened levels of socio-economic cohesion and a more comprehensive vision for transnational regions within the European Union.

[Lees het volledige artikel in Donau 2009/2]
(...)

Het volledige artikel is te lezen in Donau 2009/02.