Les politiques européennes et les villes frontalières en Europe

Abstract

Europe, perhaps more than any other region in the world, is characterized by the presence of border cities and conurbations, urban areas whose morphological and functional continuity can be felt across one or several national borders. In 2010, the ESPON Metroborder program thus identified some forty urban communities within the EU and on its limits. However, this dimension of towns and borders has long been neglected, by the states as much as by the European Union. And yet, as part of the opening regime specific to internal borders, those urban spaces are emblems and vectors of European integration on the local scale. This article demonstrates how border cities have been an essential part of the European integration process since its very beginning and how their contribution has been fostered by the EU’s regional policy programs, especially since the 2000s, helping them to be recognized as specifically dynamic urban border spaces and to use this label in order to develop a multitude of cross-border projects.

Keywords

• European Union
• Border
• European integration
• Border town
• Cross-border agglomeration
• European programs