Territory, Rights and Europe: Shared Issues of the “Environmentalists” and the “Regionalists”

The starting point of the article is a statement by Maurits Coppieters, a prominent representative of the Flemish democratic party 'Volksunie', who in the late 1970s happened to define regionalists, federalists and ecologists as “the emerging political family of the Europe of the future”. Indeed, our purpose is to shed light on these ‘family ties’, that in general bind environmentalists and ecologists on the one hand, and those who, with a somewhat generic term, can be called ‘regionalists’, on the other. This survey takes as privileged references Western Europe and the period between the early 1960s and the present day, and is carried out taking into consideration in particular the positions of ‘regionalist’ groups, movements and parties. Our attention will be focused on three ‘key questions’ – territory, rights and the European dimension – on which the bond between ‘environmentalists’ and ‘regionalists’ is manifested in agreements of both a theoretical and a practical nature.