Solidarity in Border Regions Versus National Reflex – Post-Covid Europe #3

The public health crisis generated by the Covid19 pandemic and its consequences, along with the crisis management measures put in place by the European States and Union, deserve an analysis. The brutal socioeconomic and health impacts of this unforeseen crisis should make us reflect, among other things, on crisis management and social protection models, our public policies, political systems and the relationship between technology and human rights. For this reason, the Coppieters Foundation is releasing a series of papers by experts to reflect on various topics related to post-Covid19 Europe. Paper #1, focussing on governance, is available here. Paper #2, focussing on the Green Deal and Next Generation EU, is available here.

In this paper, Martin Unfried, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Transnational and Euroregional Cooperation and Mobility (ITEM) at Maastricht University, discusses the general issue of solidarity during the crisis. For this he uses results of a research project in the Meuse-Rhine Euroregion. Unfried demonstrates why border regions were not prepared to tackle a pandemic situation with solidarity and well-coordinated action across borders. He also discusses why national crisis management did not enable cross-border solutions but rather led to more complexity for cross-border coordination due to national steering. The protection of national capacities became the main political objective of national governments, this having particular negative repercussions on the fundamental freedoms of citizens and companies in border regions. It also led to the revival of old-fashioned ideas about closing borders as a political instrument to safeguard national interest. We need to rethink the nature of cross-border territories and how cross-border governance could be strengthened in order to avoid the revival of national top-down steering in the future.

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This paper is financially supported by the European Parliament. The European Parliament is not liable for the content of the paper nor the opinions expressed by its authors.

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