Europeanisation within Austria's Healthcare System: Path-dependent Usages of Europe in Border Regions

During the last couple of years, sociological approaches in European studies have gained increasing attention from scholars. The "usages of Europe" approach looks at the opportunities and resources that the EU provides for national actors to advance their interests, from a bottom-up perspective. As European rules on cross-border healthcare have been threatening the principle of the territoriality of healthcare services, the article analyses two cross-border healthcare projects in Austrian border regions to determine if and how actors' strategies have been Europeanised, and whether their actions could destructure national welfare boundaries. In order to explain how these regional actors incorporate European resources into their strategies a combination of the "usages of Europe" approach with Historical Institutionalism is suggested.