Centrope
Centrope is the name of a European region , which (clockwise) from the Czech district of South Moravia , the Slovak landscape associations Bratislava (Pressburg) and Trnava (Tyrnau), the western Hungarian counties Győr-Moson-Sopron (Raab-Wieselburg-Ödenburg) and Vas (Eisenburg) ) and the Austrian federal states of Burgenland , Lower Austria and Vienna . Furthermore, the cities of Brno (Brünn), Bratislava , Trnava , Győr , Sopron , Szombathely , Eisenstadt and St. Pölten are direct members of the Centrope committees. On the basis of the 2003 Kittsee Declaration , they are working together to build the European region in the four-country corner.
history
The “central Europe region” ( cent ral europe ) was founded in 2003 with the agreements of Kittsee , an Austrian village near the Slovak capital and the Hungarian border. It has more than 7.2 million inhabitants on around 54,500 km². Its foundation aims to develop the area into one of the strongest economic areas in Europe.
The specific aim of forming a region is cooperation in business , infrastructure , education and culture . Joint advertising in the tourism sector and joint lobbying are aimed for .
The region, then located in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy , was an important cultural, transport and industrial center in Europe even before the First World War . In particular due to the emergence of the Eastern Bloc after the Second World War , which was secured against Austria with the Iron Curtain , the synergies of the individual parts of the region were lost for decades. Now that the entire region has been in the European Union since 2004 and in the Schengen zone that is free of internal border controls since December 2007 , they are to be rebuilt.
In the first phase, pilot projects were carried out until 2007. Subsequently, cooperation structures were created at the political and administrative level, which enable continuous cooperation between all partner cities and partner regions on an equal footing.
On October 25, 2012, the governors and mayors of Pamhagen decided on the "Centrope 2013+ Strategy". It is intended to guarantee long-term cooperation with regular political coordination. A joint mobility management is to be developed and different aspects are to be focused: A “knowledge region” is to be created under the direction of the Czech partners, while the Slovak partners coordinate the tourism agendas and the Austrian partners concentrate on transport and infrastructure.
A report by the OECD confirms that the transnational management of the region is weak due to the different possibilities of the partners to manage and finance projects.
Projects
Education and culture
The edTWIN project launched by the City School Council for Vienna in 2009 with partners from the regions of South Moravia, Bratislava and Győr-Moson-Sopron is primarily aimed at schoolchildren, teachers and education professionals. It is intended to promote the learning of the other languages spoken in Centrope and thus prepare for living and working in Centrope.
For those interested in culture, the magazine K2-kultur is published in centrope in Vienna .
With Centrope TT, there is an association of economic and scientific institutions in the region to promote innovation and technology transfer.
economy
The economic core area of Centrope are the twin cities Vienna and Bratislava with their high educational and training competence as well as the concentration of research institutions. The Slovakian automobile production facilities are located in the immediate vicinity of Bratislava, the western Hungarian metal center Győr and the supplier industry in Eastern Austria are nearby . The emerging IT sector and the Lower Austrian wood cluster contribute to the diversification of the region .
The TwinEntepreneurs project promotes cross-border start-ups.
In the last few years hundreds of companies from other countries have settled in the Vienna-Bratislava region, serving the entire Central and Eastern European region from here.
In the tourism sector, Centrope has its thermal tradition as well as extensive wellness offers . The cultural offer is varied and is to be marketed jointly via the mycentrope.com and tourcentrope.eu websites . The MyCentrope card gives you discounts on various tourist offers.
Infrastructure
Due to the Iron Curtain, many traffic routes in the region were interrupted or severely restricted in their use for almost 50 years. Since 2000, massive investments have been made in the infrastructure expansion of the region.
Train traffic between Vienna and Pressburg has been intensified on both routes - north of the Danube via the Marchegger Ast , south of the Danube via the Eastern Railway branch line from Parndorf to Bratislava Petržalka. The Twin City Liner connects the two cities three times a day on the Danube. The cooperation between the two airports proposed by Vienna has been discussed for years.
Cross-border traffic between southern Moravia and the Lower Austrian Weinviertel has also been increased. The Raab-Oedenburg-Ebenfurter Eisenbahn , a private railway owned by Hungary and Austria, is active in the Burgenland-West Hungary area . Local cross-border road connections have been reactivated or expanded since the border controls were abandoned. The north-east motorway has been connecting Bratislava with Northern Burgenland and subsequently Vienna since 2007. In the Weinviertel , construction is underway on the northern motorway (A5) from Vienna towards Brno, although further construction on the Czech side has not yet been clarified.
2012 under the name of freedom bicycle bridge one on the March leading combination of Devinska Nova Ves (Neudorf Thebes) for Schloss Hof in Marchfeld opened. The bridge was largely funded by the EU .
The twin cities as a gateway to Asia?
The twin cities of Vienna and Bratislava want to develop into Europe's gateway to Asia by expanding rail and waterways. For example, there are efforts to extend the broad - gauge Trans-Siberian Railway to Bratislava and Vienna and to connect it with the Danube waterway and the road.
In Russia , the activation of the Trans-Siberian Railway is already being considered intensively. In an attempt, a container train from Japan covered the 10,500 km route in nine days. With an expansion to 120 km / h, the route could be covered in three and a half days. A sea transport comparable for this route takes three weeks.
Similar time savings would result if container ships from Asia with freight for Centrope no longer had to be unloaded in Rotterdam or Hamburg , but the containers in Rijeka in Croatia (onward transport by rail) or in the Black Sea in Constanța , Romania (onward transport with Danube ships ) , could be reloaded. Since low water often creates an obstacle to shipping between Rotterdam, Vienna and Pressburg, deliveries via the eastern part of the Danube would shorten the travel time to the Twin Cities by a few days.
Centrope Prize
The “Centrope Foundation Prize” was founded in 2003 by the City of Vienna and the Raiffeisenlandesbank Niederösterreich-Wien together with the embassies of the three neighboring countries Czech Republic , Slovakia and Hungary . It is awarded for outstanding, cross-border and international services in the greater Central Europe region and is endowed with 10,000 euros . It has been awarded since 2007.
- In 2007 , the first to receive this award was Mayor Gerhard Schödinger from Wolfsthal , an Austrian municipality neighboring the Slovakian capital, Bratislava, in which Bratislava “house builders” have settled in newly built single-family houses in recent years.
- 2008 the mayor of the border river were March located Slovak Záhorská Ves , Boris Šimkovič , and the Mayor of Buk in Hungary, Lajos Horváth , honored for their cross-border activities in the region.
- In 2009 the prize was awarded to the Viennese media entrepreneur and publishing director Eduard Harant , who played a key role in the construction of the Karl Renner House , a house of encounters, which was built in the Moravian town of Dolní Dunajovice (Unter-Tannowitz) near the Austrian border.
- In 2010 , Hannes Brauner , an Austrian with roots in all Centrope countries, received the prize for his series of events "Future District Donaustadt" in Vienna and other events he initiated in the cities of the Centrope region.
- In 2011 the prize went to the director of kindergarten and elementary school, Petr Kotyza , who has made it possible for young athletes from Schwechat to stay in Moravia since 2005 and also tries to arrange visits to the Czech Republic for children with less financial support.
- In 2012 the award went to the Slovak tenor and chamber singer of the Vienna State Opera, Peter Dvorský , who internationalized the children's song competition "Slávik Slovenska" (Nightingale of Slovakia) as a cross-border competition, so that events are already taking place in Canada.
- In 2013 the prize was awarded to Nika Brettschneider and Ludvik Kavin, director and director of the Vienna Theater Brett . The theater is committed to mutual communication and creative cooperation with Austria's neighboring countries in Central Europe.
- 2014 was Agnes Katona , president of the association " Culture Platform International Danube Philharmonic " awarded the prize. The reasoning states that with the "Central European, multinational orchestra, she has created an intellectual and cultural network in the region".
- In 2015 the association Rote Nasen Clowndoctors and its founder Monica Culen received the award.
- 2016 was András Smuk price. The laureate came to Austria in 1956 as a ten-year-old boy and has been involved in various associations for Hungarians living in Austria since the 1970s.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Summit 4 - Press Release. (PDF) centrope.com, archived from the original on April 6, 2015 ; Retrieved April 18, 2015 .
- ↑ OECD Territorial Reviews: Netherlands 2014 - limited preview in Google book search
- ↑ edTWIN website ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Centrope Foundation Prize. Retrieved August 27, 2016 .
- ↑ Centrope Prize to "bridge builder" Eduard Harant ( Memento of the original from January 24, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in wien.international.at of October 10, 2009, accessed on April 30, 2010.
- ^ Centrope Preis 2010 to Hannes Brauner on ORF Volksgruppen, accessed on April 24, 2011
- ↑ Children travel to their neighbors ( Memento of the original dated November 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on wien.international.at of September 7, 2011, accessed on December 4, 2011.
- ↑ Peter Dvorský awarded the CENTROPE Prize ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on wien.international.at from September 19, 2012, accessed on September 20, 2012.
- ↑ "CENTROPE Prize 2013" to Brettschneider and Kavin from Theater Brett at www.wien.gv.at on October 29, 2013, accessed on February 15, 2019
- ↑ Centrope Prize 2014 to Agnes Katona from www.wien.gv.at accessed on August 27, 2016
- ↑ Monica Culen receives Centrope Prize ( Memento of the original from August 28, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved on August 27, 2016 at www.rotenaseninternational.com
- ↑ Centrope Prize for Red Noses at www.wien.gv.at, accessed on August 27, 2016
- ↑ Häupl presented the Centrope Prize 2016 at www.wien.gv.at accessed on September 7, 2016
