In this article, we start with the origins of «institutional cross-border cooperation» in Europe, covering up to today’s «territorial cooperation». We define and compare the concepts of «institutional cooperation» and «traditional cooperation», focusing on analyzing the former and predicting an approximation between the two types of cooperation. We describe the main legal framework for «institutional cross-border cooperation» and analyse its main instruments, placing special attention on the Euroregion, the European Economic Interest Grouping (EEIG) and the more recent figure of the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC), all of which are important references for territorial cooperation in Europe. We finish with some brief references to the current European integration project, in which border management has become an exceptional test Bedfor deciphering certain keys in this construction process.