Cross-border regional development on the Bavarian-Czech border - the search for the 'right' forms of cooperation
Abstrakt
The political action in the Bavarian-Czech border area is characterized by its location on the former 'Iron Curtain' and by the war and eviction history. This particular situation led to a rather unique structure of cooperation relations: Compared with other border areas, it is noticeable that the middle level of cooperation - that is, between national and municipal cooperation - was activated only comparatively late.
In the past five to ten years, then has a dynamic used, so that one can speak of a 'catch-up' cooperation development. We take this politically very interesting situation as an opportunity for a synoptic reflection.
The focus of the analysis is on the two Euroregions in this area, the European Region Danube-Vltava, the initiative of the European Metropolitan Region Nuremberg, the so-called 'Development Report' and the macro-regional Danube Region Strategy. The often overlapping cooperation perimeters and initiatives can be read as an expression of institutional ambiguity.
The reasoning is based on multiple participation of the authors in the named cooperation formats and concludes with a view into a desirable future development.