THE RELATION BETWEEN TERRITORIAL COLECTIVITIES IN FRANCE AND THE EUROPEAN UNION. THOUGHTS ON THE CROSS-BORDER COOPERATION

France, one of the founding members of the European Union, is a unitary state from the administrativeterritorial point of view, based on deep centralism. Having territorial collectivities with highly complex structure (communes, departments, regions, sui-generis collectivities and overseas collectivities), France committed itself to cooperation not only between its own administrative structures, but also to cross-border cooperation within the European Union. After showing reluctance to external actions underwent by territorial collectivities, France ended up with acknowledging this right of its territorial collectivities within the «decentralized cooperation», expressly brought under regulation by the Law of 6 February 1992. According to the law, there is no need for any ratification on behalf of the State to allow cooperation between territorial collectivities, within the boundaries of their competence. The Law of 1992 thus authorized the territorial collectivities to close agreements with other collectivities from abroad. Furthermore, the Law of 4 February 1995 allowed several treaties with the border states to be signed, thus creating the SAAR-LOR-LUX region (an European cross-border region that made way for cooperation between Germany, France and Luxembourg). The French legislation also allowed several European districts to be created, acting as local groups for cross-border cooperation, created on the initiative of territorial collectivities. The aim of our study is to identify the main relationship between territorial collectivities in France and EU and to analyze the cooperation instruments used by the French collectivities in order to foster the cross-border cooperation