The EU’s notion of territoriality: the “Westphalian Memory” vs. the “New Empire”. Consequences for the macro-regional dimension of the Adriatic Sea Region

The creation of the European Union in 1992 reflected an attempt to rethink some of basic modern political concepts as national sovereignty and citizenship. But in recent years the European spatial development policy discourse has taken an evident territorial character with the enforcement of the idea of territorial cohesion and territorial continuity. The spatial predominant EU’s conception contributes to an evident emergence of a modern territorial building of the European space. Moreover, nowadays the instrument of hard and closed border and the sharp inside/outside dichotomy are accepted as the normality in Europe. Due to this notion of territoriality, the idea of the EU as a “non-Westphalian new empire” (according to the “neo-medieval paradigm”) is at least unrealistic. Its borders are getting more territorial, physical and visible, in deep contrast with an imperial historical structure. Hard border policies and practices on the borders mirror the existence of a de facto barrier and of a deep “Westphalian memory” in the way to use the territory as support of political unity. The EU’s drive to re-territorialise Europe is not a mere academic question; it has real consequences for people and places. Supra-nationalism reveals itself as a metaphor of “re-territorialization”, a paradox with strong political and economic consequences. In the macro-regional dimension of the Adriatic Sea region the EU’s “re-territorialisation” can impede seriously the cooperation across the EU’s external borders.