The EU's Strategy for the Danube Region-new impulses from a "macroregion" for multi-level governance in Central Eastern Europe?

de Frantz, Monika (2011) The EU's Strategy for the Danube Region-new impulses from a "macroregion" for multi-level governance in Central Eastern Europe? [Conference Proceedings] (Submitted)

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Abstract

Promoted by the EU commission since 2009 and the Hungarian EU presidency in 2011, EUSDR is a new transnational initiative to promote regional cooperation in Eastern Central Europe. It aims to use the existing financial and institutional means to coordinate and improve the policies and investments of the EU in the context of intergovernmental cooperation in the region. The existing intergovernmental mechanisms are characterized by institutional complexity with different funding structures, policy mandates, political competences, territorial scopes, and membership, addressing diverse stakeholders, e.g. states, regions, local authorities, business interests, NGOs, civic society. Some of these actors have indeed forwarded common interests or various notions of shared identity. But despite a rich and diverse cultural heritage, the regional context is also one of wars, ethnic conflict, as well as deep socioeconomic disparities. Thus distinguishing the EU as supranational regime of multi-level governance, as transnational actor in multi-level cooperation mechanisms, and as normative framework for political mobilization, the paper questions how EUSDR may contribute to regional integration. It takes stock of the EU's policy instruments, the existing transnational mechanisms between states and subnational actors, and various stakeholders' interests. The debates on multi-level governance, new regionalism, and constructivist IR serve to discuss the political rationale and conceptual implications of the new EU policy instrument of a 'macroregion'.

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