Creating Living Institutions EU Cross-Border Co-Operation After the Good Friday Agreement Brigid Laffan Diane Payne Institute for British-Irish Studies, UCD

A Report for the Centre for Cross Border Studies Creating Living Institutions EU Cross-Border Co-operation after the Good Friday Agreement Brigid Laffan Diane Payne Institute for British-Irish Studies, UCD May 2001 Creating Living Institutions EU Cross-Border Co-operation after the Good Friday Agreement Brigid Laffan Diane Payne May 2001 1 About the Authors Professor Brigid Laffan (Institute for British-Irish Studies) is a specialist in public policy making and in the policy process of the European Union. She is in the process of completing a study on the management of EU business in Dublin. This work will be published as a Trinity Blue Paper entitled “Organising for a Changing Europe: Irish Central Government and the European Union” in 2001. Dr Diane Payne (Institute for British-Irish Studies) has completed a major research project which focused on the EU structural funds policy decision making process in Ireland and examined the nature of multilevel policy making process therein. More recently she has completed a second research project which focused on local and regional economic policy making in the UK. The Institute for British-Irish Studies (IBIS) was founded in 1999 and is based in the Department of Politics at University College Dublin. The main aims of the Institute are: to promote and conduct academic research in the area of relations between the two major traditions on the island of Ireland, and between Ireland and Great Britain; to promote and encourage collaboration with academic bodies and with individual researchers elsewhere who share an interest in the exploration of relations between different national, ethnic or racial groups; to promote contact with policy makers and opinion formers outside the university sector, and to ensure a free flow of ideas between the academic and the non- academic worlds; and to contribute to public debate and public awareness of the evolving relations between communities within the island of Ireland and between Ireland and Great Britain. 2 About the Centre for Cross Border Studies The Centre for Cross Border Studies, based in Armagh, was set up in September 1999 to research and develop co-operation across the Irish border in education, health, business, public administration, communications and a range of other practical areas. It is a joint initiative by Queen’s University Belfast, Dublin City University and the Workers Educational Association (Northern Ireland), and is financed by the EU Special Support Programme for Peace and Reconciliation. Between February and June 2001 the Centre will publish research reports on cross-border telecommunications, cross-border health services, all-Ireland co- operation to tackle disadvantage in education, EU cross-border funding before and after the Good Friday Agreement and a number of other areas of practical North-South co-operation. Other Reports in This Series The Evolution of Telecom Technologies: Current Trends and Near-Future Implications. Fionn Murtagh, John Keating, Susan Bergin, Chris Harper, Geraldine McParland, Mohsen Farid. February 2001. Cross-border Co-operation in Health Services in Ireland. Jim Jamison, Michelle Butler, Patricia Clarke, Martin McKee, Ciaran O’Neill. March 2001. Ireland’s Learning Poor: Adult Educational Disadvantage and Cross-Border Co-operation. Paul McGill, Mark Morgan. April 2001 3 Acknowledgements This project was carried out over a one-year period from April 2000 to April 2001. We were conducting research in an unstable political and institutional environment as the institutions and processes provided for in the Good Friday Agreement were established. The focus of the research was not on the ‘high politics’ associated with the Agreement but on the micro-institutional and policy processes that the Agreement was designed to facilitate and foster. We feel privileged to have had the opportunity as social scientists to have witnessed the formative period in the creation of such original political arrangements. The research for this report was conducted under the auspices of the Institute for British-Irish Studies in the Department of Politics, University College Dublin and was commissioned by the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh. We would like to express our appreciation of the financial support of the Centre for Cross Border Studies and the scholarly and administrative support of IBIS. In particular we would like to thank John Coakley, the Director of IBIS, Carmel Coyle, the research administrator and Karin Lang, administrative assistant, in addition to Andy Pollak, the Director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies. This research could not have been conducted without Jennifer Brown who worked on the project for a period before leaving for the Commission in Brussels and Joan Hart who proved a very able facilitator for focus groups in Cookstown. We would also like to express our thanks to those listed in appendix 2 who gave willingly of their time for the in-depth interviews that form the core of the research. We greatly enjoyed our many trips to Belfast and around the border region itself during the course of the fieldwork. Professor Liam O’Dowd and Professor Elizabeth Meehan of Queen’s University Belfast gave us very insightful feedback on a first draft of the report. Responsibility for any errors or misjudgements of the processes we analysed remain with the authors. Brigid Laffan Diane Payne Institute for British-Irish Studies Department of Politics University College Dublin April 2001 4 Contents List of figures 7 List of tables 8 Abbreviations 9 Executive summary 11 Introduction 20 Background 20 INTERREG in the context of the new institutions 21 The study in outline 23 Chapter 1 Cross-border co-operation in Europe 24 Introduction 24 The development of a European border programme 26 Situating cross-border co-operation in a European context 36 Conclusions 44 Chapter 2 INTERREG and the Irish border 45 Introduction 45 The genesis of an EU role 46 A framework of analysis 52 Conclusions 57 Chapter 3 The implementation and evaluation of INTERREG II 59 Introduction 59 The structure of the INTERREG II programme 60 The management process for INTERREG II 62 Project proposal and the ‘Border Santa’ 65 Joint working groups 69 Measures and policy making under INTERREG II 77 Summarising the key management issues for INTERREG II 84 Chapter 4 Framing INTERREG III 87 Introduction 87 Institution-building 87 European Commission thinking on INTERREG 95 Bottom-up networks 96 Regionalisation in Ireland 100 The trajectory of change 100 INTERREG III: the preparatory phase 101 Conclusions 108 5 Contents Chapter 5 The negotiations for INTERREG III and programme complement 110 Introduction 110 INTERREG III: the story unfolds 111 The draft INTERREG III programme: an analysis 112 The European Commission rejection 116 Reaction of the Irish government and the Northern Ireland executive 118 Cross-border networks: carving out a role in programme implementation 120 Conclusions 129 Chapter 6 Conclusions and recommendations 131 Introduction 131 Multilevel governance at work 131 Recommendations 134 Appendices 141 Appendix 1: Methodology 141 Appendix 2: List of interviews conducted for this reseach 143 Appendix 3: Report on focus groups on the role of the cross-border networks in the management and implementation of INTERREG III 146 Appendix 4: Joint INTERREG programme for Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland, 1994-99 155 Appendix 5: Areas of responsibility of the INTERREG Development Officer 160 Appendix 6: Working group process and project evaluation criteria under INTERREG II 162 Appendix 7: Type of key issues discussed during the monitoring committee meetings 165 Appendix 8: Political composition of district councils in the cross-border networks 1993/1997 169 Appendix 9: Questionnaire for networks 170 Appendix 10: Summary of consultation questions for INTERREG III 171 Appendix 11: Proposed new management structure for SEUPB 172 Appendix 12: Executive summary of Action Team 173 Appendix 13: Proposed structure of border corridor groups 175 BIBLIOGRAPHY 176 Books, articles and monographs 176 Internet resources 179 6 List of Figures Figure 1.1: Financial allocations for the Community Initiatives 2000-2006 33 Figure 1.2: European Commission model of cross-border co-operation 36 Figure 1.3: The structure of Euregio Rhine-Waal 39 Figure 1.4: The structure of PAMINA 40 Figure 1.5: Structure of co-operation in Alentejo/Extremadura 41 Figure 2.1: Policy networks and outcomes 54 Figure 2.2: Phases of the policy process 55 Figure 3.1: Implementation and evaluation phase for INTERREG II 64 Figure 3.2: Management and implementation of INTERREG II 64 Figure 4.1: The role of the Special EU Programmes Body in relation to INTERREG III 91 Figure 4.2: Institutional framework of the Special EU Programmes Body 92 Figure 4.3: Key relationships for the networks 103 7 List of Tables Table 1.1: Objectives of the non-quota measures 27 Table 1.2: Community initiatives 1994-99 28 Table 1.3: Complementarity and partnership (Article 8) 34 Table 1.4: Factors influencing cross-border co-operation 38 Table 1.5: Summary of European regional structures 43 Table 2.1: Sub-phases of the policy process 56 Table 3.1: Percentage contribution of various structural funds to INTERREG II in the Republic of Ireland/Northern Ireland 62 Table 3.2: Sub-programmes and measures under INTERREG II. 63 Table 3.3: INTERREG development officer reports to monitoring committee 67 Table 3.4: Working groups established under INTERREG II (sub-programme 1) 70 Table 3.5: Operation

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