European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation in cross-border governance in Central and Eastern Europe: do they make a difference?

The significance of local cross-border cooperation structures is expected to grow in the 2014-2020 implementation period of cohesion policy, especially through increased participation of European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation (EGTCs), introduced as a legal tool by the European Union in 2006. In 2015, 53 EGTCs had been registered with the Committee of the Regions and while these have attracted attention from a number of scholars, there is still much need for empirical investigation into how these new organizations function and perform. The current paper seeks to investigate whether the presence of an EGTC make cross-border governance different and how? For this purpose the paper focuses on the European country with most EGTCs at its border (Hungary) and compares one of its border with several operating EGTCS (Hungary-Slovakia) with one where there is none (Hungary-Austria). In addition, two further aspects of cross-border governance are explored. The first concerns a question of specific relevance in Central and Eastern Europe, namely how EGTCs are managing under conditions where local authority is contested by the national level, while there is pressure from Community level to increase local ownership through the application of community-led local development? (Brusis 2014; Dabrowski 2014). The second aspect is how the quality of contact networks between and within different types of actors affect the efficiency of governance. The paper draws on several rounds of interviews with relevant actors in the two border regions in the period 2009-2015.