Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 30th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview WG4: Inter-regional and Cross-border Coop. and Develop. Author(s) Stefan Okruch Andrássy University Budapest Budapest Hungary Martina ECKARDT, Andrássy University Budapest, Hungary Title The strength of strong ties: Did EGTCs make CBC more resilient during the Corona crisis? File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Stefan Okruch Abstract The Corona crisis revealed how fragile the achievement of open borders across Europa is. But it has also shown that a health threat, which does not respect national borders, can only be managed across borders. So far, the EGTC (= European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation) is the main governance form for permanent cross-border cooperation (CBC) of public entities in the European Union and beyond. It has always been a matter of controversy whether the legal innovation of the EGTC could promote and support CBC. Should not CBC rely on the “strength of weak ties” (Granovetter) across borders? And, even more skeptical, may tight legal obligations and extrinsic incentives “crowd out” the intrinsic motivation for CBC? In short, does the legal form of the EGTC fall victim to a ‘weakness of strong ties’? A closer look, however, reveals that the ‘weak ties’ may be the outcome (intended or not) of the increased accountability, transparency and coordination that are subject to and consequences of the strict legal obligations within EGTCs (Eckardt/Okruch 2021). The Corona pandemic, despite all its traumata, did offer an unprecedented opportunity for testing these competing hypotheses. To shed some light on the questions raised above we present the results of two ongoing research projects that complement each other, both regarding their analytical focus and the empirical design applied. To analyze the strength and weaknesses of the EGTC as a governance mechanism in times of crisis, we provide results from interviews with members from two EGTCs. The focus of these two case studies is on how the EGTC assists the health care systems coping with the pandemic. The Euregio Tyrol, South Tyrol, Trentino covers Italy and Austria, while the Greater Region includes public entities from Belgium, France, Germany and Luxembourg. In addition we provide preliminary results from an online survey among EGTCs in the EU. The central question addressed here is the impact the pandemic had on cross-border cooperation within single EGTCs. To answer it, a number of hypotheses are stated and tested by OLS estimations. By using this exploratory mixed-method approach, we receive insights both about the impact of Covid-19 on the main public governance instrument in the EU for cross-border cooperation, the EGTC, as well as on the impact the EGTC had in coping with the challenges posed by the pandemic. As a result of this empirical approach, a first assessment of the resilience of the EGTC for cross-border cooperation in times of crisis is to be expected. In addition, the results will enable a more elaborate empirical research design for a follow-up research project.
