This paper examines the impact of European integration on territorial restructuring in the EU. It applies Bartolini’s (2005) analytical framework which links structural conditions, resources, and demands for “exit” at the regional level to a comparative study of processes of devolution, cross-border cooperation, and demands for regional autonomy in interface, internal, and external peripheries of the EU. Case studies include key regions in Western Europe (France/Belgium/The Netherlands), Central Europe (Slovakia/Hungary/Romania), and Southeastern Europe (Bulgaria/Turkey). Substate territories have a variety of exit options for revising their relationship with the existing state: interregional cooperation, demands for a larger share of state resources, and forms of separatism. Based on case study analysis and comparison, the paper finds that variation in the intensity of demands for “exit” is explained by the relative correspondence between cross-border cooperation, market homogenization, and the presence of territorial-regional institutions in the EU border regions. In the case of reinforcing patterns, the structure of loyalties is altered to create a distinctive regional-civic identity with demands for political voice at the subnational level. By contrast, in the case of disconnect, minority and regional political mobilization at the national level largely exceeds the potential of substate structures to alter minority demands for “exit.”
