Transborder Regional Alliances in Europe: Chances for Ethnic Euroregions?

Abstract

This contribution deals with obstacles to development of ethnic transborder regional alliances in Europe. It includes some theoretical considerations as well as case studies of three European border zones with so-called ‘interface minorities’. These are the Belgian–German border zone, the Basque Country and the former Habsburg Kronland of Tyrol. From a perspective that European integration and regionalism are phenomena related to state decline, the dynamics of transborder regional alliances or ‘euroregions’ can be considered to take place relatively independent of the confines and institutional structures of the states. However, critical evaluations of the phenomena of regionalism indicate that we should be careful not to assume that regional actors in a border zone with interface minorities are self-evidently inclined and able to create an ethnic euroregion. Instead, it is more realistic to assume a more complex situation with a heterogeneous field of actors and constraining conditions emanating from the structural and social institutionalisation of the states. In all cases the different positions of regional populations in the different state contexts have brought about asymmetries in the complex of elements that constitute ethnoregional dynamics. The cases seem to confirm that the principle obstacles to the formation of ethnic euroregions are related with institutional differences between the states and heterogeneity of actors.