Repositioning the EU’s Northernmost Regions in a European Territorial Context

Abstract

The growing perception of the European Union as an increasingly single and integrated territory requires specific regions to position themselves and highlight their specifities vis-à-vis the European space. This is amplified by an apparent re-orientation of EU regional policy towards a more spatial approach that takes the territorial diversity existing into account. The Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish northernmost regions have a long tradition in collective action within the framework of Nordic co-operation. Recently, they presented themselves as the so-called Northern Sparsely Populated Areas (NSPA) and engaged in inter-regional co-operation in order to position themselves on the regional policy map of Europe. Within this setting this paper aims to investigate how actors (regional and national level, EU) attempt to position the northernmost regions within a European territorial context and to examine how European spatial policy concepts are recognized, rejected or adapted during this process. Keywords: EU regional policy, northernmost regions, territorial capital