Cross-Border Cooperation
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CROSS-BORDER COOPERATION BOUNDARY CITIES DEVELOPMENT DUE TO SCHENGEN AGREEEMENT SCHWARZKOPF FOUNDATION TRAVEL REPORT by TOMASZ LATO June 2016 Content 1. Questions of the travel ..................................................................................................... 3 2. Preparations ..................................................................................................................... 4 3. Implementation ................................................................................................................ 6 4. Travel experiences and insights concerning the travel questions ................................... 7 4.1. German-Polish border .............................................................................................. 7 4.1.1. Frankfurt (Oder)-Słubice ....................................................................................... 7 4.1.2. Guben-Gubin ....................................................................................................... 11 4.1.3. Görlitz-Zgorzelec ................................................................................................ 13 4.1.4. Zittau-Bogatynia .................................................................................................. 16 4.2. German-Austrian border ........................................................................................ 20 4.2.1. Freilassing-Salzburg ............................................................................................ 20 4.3. German-Swiss-French border ................................................................................ 23 4.3.1. Basel-Weil am Rhein-Lörrach-Saint Louis ......................................................... 23 4.4. German- French border .......................................................................................... 27 4.4.1. Strasbourg-Kehl .................................................................................................. 27 4.4.2. Saarbrücken-Forbach........................................................................................... 31 5. Possible difficulties and challenges ............................................................................... 34 2 1. Questions of the travel The purpose of the research is to investigate how the border cities cooperate and develop thanks to the Schengen Agreement and whether they benefit the European community. The Schengen Agreement was signed on 14 June 1985 in Schengen, village in Luxemburg. The agreement abolishes the control of persons crossing the borders between the Member States of the system, and in return strengthen cooperation on security and asylum policy. It also applies to cross-border cooperation. In the Schengen zone the people have four basic freedoms: free movement of people, free movement of goods, free movement of capital and free movement of services. One can select a place of residence, education, work, leisure or shopping. Cross-border agglomeration are “Europe in miniature” that present all of them every day. 80% of the population in Europe lives in urban areas. More than 60 cross-border agglomeration have been identified in Europe. They represent almost 25 million people.1 Nowadays in Europe we observe a migration crisis caused by a massive influx of immigrants. It is the strongest occurrence of this type since the Second World War. Europe did not have any ready answer how to deal with it and in the end of the year 2015 we could hear about a crisis of the Schengen Agreement and temporarily reinstated controls at the German-Austrian border. I started to wonder if this decisions could influence on my life. The average citizen of Europe does not feel any influence of the Schengen Agreement in one’s daily life, appreciating it only during travelling. However, there are places, areas of life and industry sectors which were significantly changed thanks to the lack of borders. I am Architect and Urban Planner, so in the first place I turned my attention on the cross-border partner cities and I focused on the influence on urban development. In order to increase the awareness of the positive impact of the agreement I investigated how border cities changed since the Schengen Area functions. 1 Cross-borde agglomerations and urban networks in Europe, MOT (2007) 3 2. Preparations Basing on a preliminary investigation I have chosen a group of various contiguous cities located in different European countries which work on overcoming the border-effects and create cross- border agglomerations: A) Frankfurt (Oder) / Słubice, B) Guben / Gubin, C) Görlitz / Zgorzelec, D) Zittau / Bogatynia, E) Freilassing / Salzburg, F) Weil am Rhein / Lörrach / Saint-Louis / Basel, G) Kehl / Strasbourg, H) Saarbrücken / Forbach. 4 All the cities are located along the German border. In my opinion it is characteristic for three main reasons: 1) Germany and France was the precursors of the abolition of border controls, they signed the first agreement already in the year 1985; 2) through the territory of Germany went the Iron Curtain that divided Europe for many years, we can easily compare western border agglomerations to eastern; 3) around 1,1 million migrants arrived in Germany in 2015, many refugees still want to cross the border. When I was writing the research project, the migration crises wasn’t so advanced yet. Temporary border controls were mentioned just as a theoretical possibility. When I started my trip they were already implemented. In the time I arrived in Salzburg, there were located the biggest makeshift refugee camps. In general I wanted to focus on local cooperation, however, during my preliminary insights I noticed that quite often the cooperation is managed on higher, regional level, due to different legal possibilities of the towns and cities. In most of the cases eurodistricts are mainly responsible for the support of integration of the border cities as the most important associations, but the initiative usually comes from the border cities themselves. 5 3. Implementation My research trip took place on 22 February -14 March 2016. The main plan was to visit the border site and observe the effects of cooperation. The task was to check the following issues: • Integration of urban space and infrastructure – cohesion of regions, stage of urbanization, joint development plan or separated, coherent space or incoherent, barriers or continuity, bilingual signs or monolingual, complementing of functions or duplication. • Integration of public transport – way of functioning: common network or separated, common system of tickets or separated, adapted to people who live and work on different sides of the border or not. • Cultural events – individual or common, multicultural and integrating events. • Promotion of the agglomeration – common or individual. Before my trip I also tried to get in touch with representatives of local authorities. Some of them wanted to gladly answer my questions, from others I didn’t get any answers. I also personally visited several of them. Moreover, I talked to local tourist information offices’ workers to find useful information about, for example, local events and promotion strategy. In every city I stayed with the locals through one of the popular websites. Thanks to that I was closer to the people living there and could get know their stories and points of views. I also planned to collect some specific figures about population, area, etc. However, they were really difficult to find or they were never collected in any constructive way, so I was forced to give them up. In fact, the best and most important indicator for the impact of the border in everyday life is the frequency of border crossings, however, nobody measures it. 6 4. Travel experiences and insights concerning the travel questions 4.1. German-Polish border The Germany-Poland border was created in the year 1945 after the end of the Second World War without any significant consultations with the involved countries. It was placed along Oder –Neisse line. The border was a compensation to Poland for territories lost to the Soviet Union. In effect several German river cities were divided into two parts – Görlitz-Zgorzelec, Guben- Gubin, Frankfurt (Oder)-Słubice. 4.1.1. Frankfurt (Oder)-Słubice Słubice used to be a district of Frankfurt. Due to this fact the urban space is quite coherent. However, there are significant differences in the connection with the river. On the Frankfurt side the space is visibly more open to the water, the neighboring buildings are directed to it and there are located boulevards. In Słubice we can find only neglected embankments and postwar buildings reversed from the border. Pic 1 German-Polish border – Oder, view from Frankfurt’s riverbank 7 One of the most important implementation along the border, concerning urban planning, and the principal achievement is the transformation of Ziegenwerder island on the Oder River into a park with a cross-border dimension (signs in both languages, cross-border events). This project was financed by the Interreg IIIA and PHARE programmes. On the Polish sides just next to the bridge are located petrol stations, shops with tobacco and supermarkets, were a lot of German people go for shopping. There are quite popular because of the much lower prices. Between Poland and Germany we can travel by bus no 983 in the VBB tariff connecting Plac Bohaterów in Słubice, Frankfurt railway station, both town centers, two universities and Słubice shopping center. In Frankfurt the well-developed way of public