A historical perspective
This publication seeks to provide a key to understanding the complexity, richness and diversity of the examples of territorial cooperation in Europe and illustrating their role in the process of European integration.
2015 marks the 25th anniversary of Interreg, the European Union instrument to promote cross-border, transnational and interregional cooperation.
Interreg as a financial instrument was introduced in 1990 primarily to compensate for the introduction of the Single Market and soften the blow for border regions, which, everyone thought, would suffer most from the abolition of economic borders. Much has been achieved by the Interreg community since then.
This publication has been requested by the European Commission and carried out by two TEIN members (Birte Wassenberg, IEP de Strasbourg and Bernard Ritel, from IFD) in cooperation with the Mission Opérationnelle Transfrontalière (MOT) with the Euro-Institut support.
