Overview: Infrastructure Development and European Integration
This project examines how supranational funding is transforming regional development, infrastructure, and local governance at the European Union’s border regions between Romania, Ukraine, and Moldova. Infrastructure development has become a key target for funding support by the European Commission and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, while Russian subsidies have become economic lifelines for separatist regions. Such competing regional influences and funding mechanisms have propelled the question of European integration to the center of popular debates. The expansion of the EU’s regulatory influence in these regions has been coupled with an expansion of infrastructure and development funding and border-cooperation programs. These funding allocations link supranational institutions, such as the European Commission, with city and raion governments. They leave unaltered borders and national regulatory structures while transforming the built environment and local governance. This project maps infrastructure development projects in the border regions between Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine to examine the connections between the electoral geography of these regions, the allocation of supranational funds, and shifting regional alliances.