ABSTRACT
The chapter analyses the 25 years of cross-border cooperation (CBC) at the EU–Russian border by putting it into a paradiplomacy/securitisation context. It is argued that CBC on the external border has always been both an instrument of regional development at the subnational level and an EU and Russian foreign (and security) policy tool. The author investigates the evolution of EU–Russian CBC from a normative idea of supporting post-communist transformation in Russia and its border regions, to the implementation of jointly financed and managed cross-border programmes. The last part of the chapter outlines current challenges to the development of EU–Russian CBC. These are both endogenous, such as the bureaucratisation of cross-border governance, and exogenous, such as the influence of the Ukrainian crisis, factors which make any radical progress in EU–Russian CBC unlikely in the coming years. Yet CBC remains one of the islands of cooperation and one of the very few areas of mutually beneficial relations for all participating actors (the EU and its member states, Russia, sub-national authorities and non-state actors).
