ABSTRACT
While the proponents of the Europe of regions have accentuated the importance of regional identities, ordinary people and their regional identities have on many occasions remained marginal to the efforts of regional actors to gain resources for development plans and to make their regions into 'products'. One problem is that regional consciousness has no necessary relations to administrative lines drawn by governments. Moreover, the ongoing re-scaling of democracy and decisionmaking also challenges the state-based, fixed spaces of governance.
