Cross-Border Cooperation as a Vehicle for External Europeanisation: Promoting EU Norms and Practices of Subnational Governance across the Polish-Ukrainian Border

This paper aims at assessing the potential of cross-border cooperation (CBC) as a tool in the transmission of European norms and practices across the EU’s external border, at the local and regional levels. It will focus on the case of CBC between Poland and Ukraine in the context of the CBC Programme Poland-Belarus-Ukraine 2007-2013 funded under the European Neighbourhood Policy Instrument, and consider the specific issue of the transfer of good governance practices. Drawing from theories of external europeanisation and namely the concept of social learning, the paper will attempt to determine how CBC practices in the Polish-Ukrainian borderland can foster the ‘europeanisation’ of Ukrainian transborder regions. Based on the results from interviews and questionnaires with CBC actors on both side of the border, the research will aim at identifying the elements fostering and hindering the transmission of European practices and values, especially when it comes to norms of local/regional good governance. This paper is based on the assumption that the density of links and interactions between transborder regions and actors should favourise the bottom-up transmission of EU norms and principles at a local and regional level. In this way, CBC should be considered as an essential element in the European Neighbourhood Policy, making up for the lack of both conditionality and socialisation hindering the europeanisation of the neighbourhood, which has been underlined by the existing literature.