The new book “A ‘Macro-regional’ Europe in the Making?- Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Evidence” edited by Stefan Gänzle and Kristine Kern includes a chapter we authored together with Dominic Stead entitled ‚Macro-regional Strategies: Agents of Europeanization and Rescaling‘.

Macro-regional strategies came into life with the development of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region in 2009 and later, the Danube, Alpine and Adriatic-Ionian Region.The collective volume presents the new approach of macro-regional strategies as a ‘functional’ cooperation over a variety of policy areas such as transport, economic innovation, environment. The new publication is the output of a series of conferences organized by Stefan Gänzle and Kristine Kern discussing the macro-regionalisation of Europe. The book has a twofold aim: It first aims at contextualisating macro-regional strategies in the field of EU multi-level governance and Cohesion Policies. Secondly, the book presents empirical evidence on six regions.

Our contribution discusses macro-regional strategies in the context of processes of Europeanization, which almost always have implications for policy rescaling. This can include the rescaling of policymaking agendas, processes, networks or powers, or alternatively the rescaling of policy ideas, narratives, norms or justifications. In many cases, these processes have a territorial dimension. Macro-regional strategies as a new form of cooperation including several countries implicate rescaling of a variety of objects, e.g. policy ideas, narratives, however the development to a new level is  unlikely in the current period.

The book is a worthy contribution to reflecting the concept of macro-regional strategies and gives a broad overview on the different processes of macro-regionalisation within Europe.