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Is EU Cross-border Cooperation Ethical? Reading Cross-border Cooperation Through the ‘Needs for Roots’ by Simone Weil

This article applies Simone Weil’s philosophical concept of ‘uprootedness’ and the ‘14 needs of the soul’, set out in her 1943 book ‘The Need for Roots’, to the empirical case study of the border ‘Italy-Slovenia’ considered within Programme 2007–2013. A multi-dimensional qualitative approach that relies on an extensive literature, consultation of primary sources and semi-structured interviews carried out between October 2013 and February 2014 has been adopted. The article questions why does cross-border-cooperation often fail to develop an ‘integrated’ border territory and a cohesive ‘moral’ community? Conversely, why does social fragmentation emerge from cross-border-cooperation? It is argued that while the EU (Commission) has focused on initiatives and projects in order to achieve regional, economic border integration, it has instead failed to develop an ‘ethical framework’ for promoting a ‘rooted’ integrated borderland and a cohesive moral community.