As this last example well illustrates, none of the growth of transborder substate relations has signalled the end of states as significant sites of regulation. The European Commission’s Director of Science and Technology almost certainly exaggerated when declaring in 1994 that:
in just a few decades, nation-states … will no longer be so relevant. Instead, rich regions built around cities such as Osaka, San Francisco and the four motors of Europe will acquire effective power. (quoted in Runyan, 1996: 242)