The crisis of the European Union manifests itself forcefully at its borders. Not only the external borders of ‘fortress Europe’, but also the internal borders between member states have returned to the centre of political debate in response to the various crises of recent years. While the desire to ‘take back control’ has led to the re-emergence of restrictions for crossing the European territory, other processes were activated in parallel at different scales, contributing to the re-signification of intra-European borders. Through an analysis of the border between Italy and France, the paper first argues for the need to emphasize the coexistence of different processes in order to understand the dynamics at work at the border; second, it proposes to question the effects of this coexistence, particularly in the definition of new models of cross-border governance.