Cross-border territorial cooperation in non-EU member countries: Evidence from Albania and Switzerland

In an age of political uncertainty, where the EU must come to terms with internal fragmentation pressures and external humanitarian emergencies, it is interesting to reflect upon the role that the European Territorial Cooperation objective can potentially play in softening such tensions. This paper explores the importance of territorial cooperation initiatives between the EU and non-member countries, with a special focus on cross-border cooperation. It does so by focusing on case studies of two countries, Albania and Switzerland, that occupy a rather different position in relation to the EU. The contribution argues that, since the 1990s, the EU has been active in promoting cooperation initiatives along its external borders by progressively in-volving candidate countries, whose candidature had still to be formulated, as well as countries whose ap-plication is not on the agenda. It shows how European Territorial Cooperation, especially through cross-border cooperation initiatives, strengthens the territorial dimension of the border relations among neighbor-ing countries, thereby improving the chances for actual integration.