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Cross-border
economic
development 81
Cross-cutting themes in cross-border economic development
Consequently, it is very rare for any two cross-border territories to be alike,
hence the need for informal meetings, seminars and other workshops.
Territorial authorities may seek to develop shared tools to promote
a cross-border territory to investors, businesses and other private
economic players in cooperation with their counterparts on the other
side of the border, in a context of increased territorial competition
encouraging elected representatives to improve the positioning and
specialisation of their territory, if such a partnership is considered to
add value and create benefits on both sides of the border.
Differences in timescale
between the public sector
and the economic sphere
Public action in the area of economic development is highly fragmented
and must typically cope with a multitude of different interests, which
makes the quest for overall coherence particularly difficult.
The conflict between the long-term thinking of the public sector and
businesses’ focus on the shorter term creates additional difficulties.
This significantly reduces the chances of uniting the two approaches,
which – despite the desire for broad and inclusive economic
governance that meets the needs of businesses and territories as far
as possible – tend to conflict with, rather than complement, each other.
Consequently, it is not surprising to see the emergence of sectoral and
thematic forms of economic cross-border cooperation (which are more
consistent with the competitiveness approach) aimed at fully fostering
complementarities, the exchange of know-how and other positive
externalities between businesses, knowledge institutions and centres
of expertise in specific specialist technical areas. This is the model of
clusters, which are in the process of being established in cross-border
areas, as well as of incubators and accelerators, which can be regarded
as tools to strengthen the cross-border entrepreneurial fabric. Thus,
public action tends to build on pre-existing elements and focus its
interventions on supporting the consolidation of industrial clusters and
the strengthening of cross-border links.
Should we therefore conclude that cross-border cooperation in
the area of economic development cannot be based on the classic
institutional framework (i.e. Type I governance)?
This requires a nuanced response. While specific forms of governance
may be constructed around economic development, in the interests of
greater effectiveness or in order to remove from the general dialogue
an issue where competition between the two sides of the border may
sometimes be felt to be too prevalent, the classic institutional framework
of cross-border cooperation should not be ruled out.
It is important to stress the necessarily heterogeneous nature of
cross-border economic governance. In the kind of liberal, regulated
environment that is typically found in European countries (even in the
most economically liberal of them), public authorities intervene actively
in the field of economic development, and this intervention, which is
necessarily institutional in nature (i.e. Type I), takes place within a national
legislative and regulatory framework, as the European Union has no
competence in respect of states’ internal organisation.
A country’s public-sector players typically develop public policies
focusing on the businesses located in their territory, despite the fact
that such policies are tightly regulated by the European Union, which
encourages the opening up of borders (via limitations on state aid, etc.).
Given that policies supporting cross-border economic development focus
primarily on SMEs (as large companies naturally operate at transnational
level), action at national level may be both pragmatic and legitimate,
even from the perspective of cross-border and European integration.
Ì Ì Indeed, players in Austria help Austrian businesses, both
nationally and at regional level (i.e. at the level of individual Länder),
to position themselves relative to the economic areas they are in,
which in many cases are cross-border areas. However, along those
borders, cross-border cooperation programmes (INTERREG A)
are considered too complex for businesses to participate in them
directly. Nevertheless, they can help to create an environment
conducive to cooperation, for example by encouraging the early
learning of the languages of neighbouring countries, etc. The
European Commission and a number of Member States (including
France) consider that public action, notably in the context of ETC
programmes, should go further and encourage businesses to
have projects financed through these programmes.
In fact, various configurations are possible, according to the
responses given to the following questions:
- Is the market left alone to operate in order to achieve cross-border
integration, or is there public intervention in the area of economic
development?
- Is such intervention conducted at national level (despite being directed
at the cross-border territory), or does it take place at cross-border level?
What is more, those configurations may vary depending on the
specific nature of the economic intervention (support for businesses,
jobs, etc.), making cross-border governance typical of the multi-level
model described by Hooghe and Marks,123 where the functional and
institutional approaches (Types I and II) are in fact more complementary
than conflicting. Each cross-border territory must choose its own path
on the basis of its own partnership configurations and its own interests.
123 Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, Types of Multi-Level Governance, Les Cahiers européens de
Sciences Po, No 03/2002