Work in progress, please do not cite or circulate!

The aim of this paper is to show how a combination of different theoretical models can explain the development of the European financial program for supporting cooperation across the Dutch-German border. Cross-border cooperation in the European Union represents a new system of multi-level and interdependent decision-making. Even though the analytical model of Multi-Level Governance (MLG) does justice to the relevance of the different levels of governance involved - subnational, national and supranational - it lacks a clear understanding of how the interaction between the actors at different levels occurs. Here, the Principal-Agent model (PA) can provide more insight. In this approach, the relationship between two actors - the principal and the agent to which authority is delegated - is characterized by oversight mechanisms by means of which the principal seeks to control the agent. In this paper, I will incorporate both approaches by focusing on the shifts of authority in German-Dutch cross-border cooperation, which created several agents by not only delegating authority from national principals to the European Commission, but also from the European Commission to the subnational Dutch-German cross-border organizations. In addition, and contrary to what is expected on the basis of the assumptions of the MLG approach, national actors were actually able in part to regain decision-making authority on cross-border cooperation rather than losing it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]