Regulating Cross-Border Regionalisation

Abstract

The political scientist Giandomenico Majone declares the European Union to be a “regulatory state” on a supranational level. In that perspective it is a hypothesis that regulation endeavours occur in every field of action related to EU policy areas. Cross-border regionalisation is an EU policy area. Consequently it is expected that EU exercises regulatory influence on the institutional framework of cross-border planning and co-operation, despite the fact that EU has no formal competence to regulate spatial planning. In this paper two different forms of regulation are focused: “hard” regulation according to law, and “soft” regulation according to learning processes and governance by persuasion. My conclusion is that European crossborder regionalisation is regulated the “soft” way, i.e. national spatial objectives, methods and options are harmonised through comparison and learning mechanisms.