Nation-States, Europe, Regions and …. Macro-Regions: A Look into Regional Integration as a Structure of Euroland Governance
EUROPE, 25 Feb 2013
Christel Hahn, Europe 2020 – TRANSCEND Media Service
Last summer (29.6.2012) the leaders of the alpine regions met in Bad Ragaz, Switzerland. In a way this was one of many similar meetings, but it was exceptional, because the number of participating regions had increased, among the participants there were representatives of the Italian Lega Nord and because of this the meeting received some attention in the European press [1] . The meeting was summarized by its chairman (Willi Haag, St. Gallen): “We want to transform the Alps into the heart chamber of Europe” [2] .
The meeting was the “Conference of the Alpine Regions” that happened at the occasion of the regular conference of the “Arge Alp” (an association of alpine regions, that was founded 40 years ago, long before Schengen and the Euro). It adopted a resolution, based on a strategy paper aimed at developing a macro-regional European strategy for the Alps.
The conference was the result of continuous networking within a number of trans-alpine working groups and organizations, which have been established during the different phases of the European integration:
EU: Ten historic steps
1951: The European Coal and Steel Community is established by the six founding members
1957: The Treaty of Rome establishes a common market
1973: The Community expands to nine member states and develops its common policies
1979: The first direct elections to the European Parliament
1981: The first Mediterranean enlargement
1993: Completion of the single market
1993: The Treaty of Maastricht establishes the European Union
1995: The EU expands to 15 members
2002: Euro notes and coins are introduced
2004: Ten more countries join the Union
Alps: The network
Efforts to protect the alpine nature are obviously older than the political integration and lead in 1952, directly after the war, to CIPRA (Commission Internationale pour la Protection des Alpes – International Commission for the Protection of the Alps).
During the first phase of the European Integration with the European Community (six founding member states) and the EFTA (most of the remaining western European states) the Arge Alp, an organization of leaders of regions in the center of the Alps, was founded in 1972.
The first European renaissance of 1985-1992 in the time of the dissolution of the iron curtain saw also the establishment of the Europaregion Tirol-Südtirol-Trentino [3] in 1989, a trans-national region built of those parts of Tirol, which had been separated by the treaty of Saint-Germain after the First World War.
In the same period, in which the European Union was created through the treaty of Maastricht, the major alpine states signed the Alpine Convention in 1991. The Alpine Conference is the regular meeting of those states.
After the EU was established it set in place the Alpine Space Programme (first beginnings in 1997) as part of its cohesion policy (i.e. regional policy).
Now, in the time when the expanded EU tries to consolidate into Euroland, all alpine regions joined with the common goal of establishing a Macro-Regional Strategy for the Alps.
All these networks are co-existing, exchanging and sharing and thus together form an alpine network, in which the officials working on transnational projects have been cooperating for a long time now, creating a feeling of “Alpine family“ Bernard Soulage, Vice-president of …. And the whole family is involved in the project of a macro-regional strategy for the Alps.
The common link for this group of European regions is its geography, which was shaped when Africa collided with Europe. This collision did not only create the high mountains, but also the surrounding basins and can for example be explored at the Matterhorn (Mount Cervin) with its peak made from gneisses from the African continent:
As has been recently shown Martin Freksa: Genesis Europas, Ber… the European peoples expanded from Europe’s mountains (Alps, Scandinavian and eastern-European mountain ranges). Whereas the Mediterranean area has seen highly developed cultures since about 5000 years, such a development started north of the Alps only about 2500 years ago. In this early age (Hallstatt culture, expansion of the Roman empire across the Alps, Christianization of Central Europe) the area of the northern lowlands of the Alps and especially the area around the Lake of Konstanz (with the bishop of Konstanz and the monasteries of St. Gallen and Reichenau) was the political, cultural and spiritual center of Central Europe.
After this excurse into distant times, let’s return to the present political development.
The “Alpine Family”
1. CIPRA is a NGO which since 60 years works for a sustainable development of the Alps. It is an umbrella of about 100 member organization with representations in Germany, France, Italy, Liechtenstein, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia and in Südtirol and its headquarter in Liechtenstein and was the main actor, which helped to create the Alpine Convention. It works with a double strategy: top-down (alpine convention) and bottom-up (projects and initiatives).
Cipra network
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This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 25 Feb 2013.
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