The border paradox. Uneven development, cross-border mobility and the comparative history of the Euregio Meuse-Rhine Ad Knotter Ad Knotter : Professeur à l’Université de Maastricht The border paradox I want to start my argument with an example of today’s cross-border relations in the area we live in. The Dutch fscal system allows mortgage interests to be deducted from the income tax of house owners. As you might imagine, this has an enormous upward efect on housing prices in the Netherlands. By a recent change of law, Dutch tax payers earning an income in the Netherlands, but owning a house across the border, are now allowed to deduct their mortgage interests too. As housing prices in Belgium are much lower than those in the Netherlands – partly as a result of the diference in the tax system – many Dutch families bought a house across the Belgian border to double proft from both the low Belgian housing prices and the Dutch fscal system. 1 Here we fnd a clear example of what I call the «border paradox»: transborder diferences – in this case the border efect in the housing market – stimulate mobility and movement of people across the border. It is not too difcult to fnd other contemporary examples, like the so-called «drugs tourism» into the Netherlands because of the more liberal attitude towards soft drugs, or the extent of cross-border shopping by Germans in the Netherlands because of the diferences in the shops’ opening hours. To say it bluntly: in these and other cases the border acts as a bridge, precisely because it is a barrier. People living in the borderlands cross this bridge because they want to proft – economically, socially or culturally – from the transborder diferences. In fact, according to geographers, the «border paradox» is at the core of the concept of «borderland» itself: the boundary creates its own distinctive region, making an element of division also the vehicle for regional defnition. 2 It is very interesting to look at the history of our Euregio as a set of cross-border relations based on this «border paradox». In the feld of social and economic history we fnd many examples ofa movement of both capital and labour across borders that can be explained by the working of this paradox. Industrialists moved or established factories and branches just across the border to proft from diferences in wage levels and market conditions, to avoid import duties and to open up new markets. In the eighteenth century, for instance, German textile entrepreneurs from the Aachen and Eifel area settled in the Dutch enclaves Vaals, Eijsden and Dalhem to open up international markets via the worldwide trading network of the Dutch Republic. 3 In the nineteenth century, after the border realignments by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the secession of Belgium from the Netherlands in the 1830s, the efect of the border paradox became even stronger: the industrialisation of both Aachen and Maastricht can be explained in this way. Opportunities just across the border induced Belgian capital from the industrial heartland in Liège to invest in Maastricht and Aachen. The pottery and glassworks, later called De Sphinx, and the paper industries in Maastricht both owe their early origins and expansion to the closing of the Dutch-Belgian border after 1830. This also led to a modest immigration of skilled workers from the Walloon provinces, Fédéralisme 2034-6298 Volume 3 : 2002-2003 - Mobilité et identités dans l'Eurégio Meuse- Rhin, 237 1