Multiple levels, multiple streams: how border regions made it into the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle

Abstract The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, signed in 2019 by the French President Macron and the German Chancellor Merkel, is widely seen as a major step for border regions on their way towards being fully acknowledged as political entities. However, while much ink has been spilled on the relevance of the treaty for future cross-border cooperation, we know surprisingly little about how that particular aspect actually became the Chapter 4 of the treaty. Given the centralized architecture of the French 5th republic, the new stipulations are actually a giant’s leap, which is difficult to explain. In this paper, we draw on evidence from policy documents and expert interviews to trace how cross-border cooperation was set on the government’s agendas as an issue to be integrated in the Aix-la-Chapelle Treaty. Building on the Multiple Streams Framework as theoretical lens, our analysis shows that actors from the French and German border regions were instrumental for the inclusion of cross-border cooperation in the Treaty. They used different channels in the multi-level system to push both central governments towards the integration of cross-border cooperation. Hence, the story how border regions made it into the Aix-la-Chapelle Treaty is a prime example of the dynamics of multi-level governance.