The best European practices of converting the border position into a competitive advantage and territorial capital of a region
Abstract Regional competitiveness is determined not only by the physical and intangible assets of a territory, but also by the regional ability to convert them into economic growth and development. Border cooperation is an important mechanism for converting territorial capital into competitive advantages for border regions. In this regard, the article is aimed at studying specific cases of the EU border regions, assessingthe impact of border cooperation on the increase of regional competitiveness and individual characteristics of territorial capital, connected with innovative development of border regions. The research is carried on the example of 10 NUTS-2 regions, included in the list of 50 most active regions by the number of implemented projects of cross-border cooperation in the programming period 2014-2020. It is shown that the specificity of the use of the potential of the border situation by EU regions is largely determined by the degree of interest of the neighbouring countries in the implementation of cross-border cooperation projects with equal importance of the joint border area for national economy as a whole. The concept of the «bottom-up» policy, on which the idea of cross-border cooperation in the EU is based, allows to intensify cooperation between local communities, create new values at the regional level: hard (new companies, jobs, new goods and services, infrastructure) and soft ones (knowledge, skills and new skills of the local community) capable of ensuring the economic and social development of border regions.
Keywords: border cooperation, border region, territorial capital, competitiveness, competitive advantage
Highlights:
♦ the potential of the border situation is exploited in the implementation of cross-border cooperation projects by creating competitive advantages on the basis of asymmetric cross-border interactions;
♦ potential accessibility (both physical, due to geographical proximity, and economic, resultingfrom border cooperation with a neighbouringterritory) created by transboundary interactions, has a positive impact on the spatial distribution of economic growth and population growth;
♦ cross-border cooperation helps participating regions to build long-term partnerships that go beyond the duration and scope of individual projects.
Marina V. Kurnikova, Maria S. Guseva - Samara State University of Economics, Samara, Russia; Balazs Istvan Toth - University of Sopron, Sopron, Hungary