Three "Eurocities": objectives for cross-border cooperation at the Hispano-Luso border

For almost sixty years, the European Union (EU) and its member states have cultivated the process of integration. At the geographical “front lines” of this process, local and regional actors form State-sanctioned, supranationally-enabled cross-border regions (CBRs) while carrying out various pragmatic cross-border cooperation (CBC) projects to address shared objectives in the midst of disparate societies, economies and governance structures. This research project investigates the objectives of three such initiatives at the border of Spain and Portugal, the unique but overlooked “Eurocity” projects, whose lead actors make bold claims of representing the “second generation” of CBC, constructing “eurocitizens” in pursuit of the “New Europe”. A content analysis of project objectives within press, websites and official project documentation suggests that local and regional Eurocity actors pursue varied objectives related to the economy, governance and society primarily as a means of improving the implicated border economies. Objectives related to enhancing localized policymaking authority or re-uniting a “submerged” people appear to play only a secondary role at best, commenting on the multi-level governance (MLG), intergovernmentalism and “Europe of the Regions” paradigms. Findings address current geographic and scalar gaps in “border studies” scholarship and raise significant questions surrounding the effects of such cooperation and its future vis-à-vis the current European financial and sovereign debt crises