The European Commission has been organising the online knowledge exchange events called ‘Beyond Borders Breakfast Debate’ since the beginning of 2021. The 28^th edition took place on 16 April on the revised Schengen Borders Code, with the participation of CESCI.

First, Jorrit Rijpma (DG HOME) summarised the novelties of the amended Schengen Border Code, highlighting the rules on the re-establishment of temporary border checks and the mandatory delineation of cross-border regions, in which derogation should be applied in a future pandemic or other threat to enable essential travels.

Pim Mertens, scientific coordinator of ITEM (Maastricht University), presented the conclusions of the territorial impact analysis published by the Institute in 2025 on the impacts of temporary border checks in Europe. He mentioned that the mandatory cross-border regions are not cross-border in reality, but border regions defined according to the national rules.

Viktória Borsos and Gyula Ocskay (CESCI) illustrated this statement by presenting the map identifying the nationally defined “cross-border regions”, which have not been harmonised between the member states. Furthermore, when plotting the map, Viktória found gaps, which should be corrected. The experts of CESCI also reclaimed the neglect of existing functional relationships when defining these border regions.

As a final contribution, Zoltán Čunderlík, head of the tourism department of the Bratislava Self-Governing Region (Slovakia), pointed out the challenges generated by the border closure in a well-integrated cross-border metropolitan area.

The video recording of the event is available at the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fst1tkLt268&list=PLOga7xzPa5G1q1RVPvzEdiB3NQMpovYev