Oradea Process in 2022

+ | 14 June 2022

On the 9th of June 2022, together with the Initiatives France Central and Eastern Europe (IFECO), the French Institutes in Budapest and Bucharest, CESCI organised a seminar within the framework of the Process of Oradea. The goal of the initiative is to make cooperation of Hungarian and Romanian stakeholders wide-spread and continuous by creating a climate of mutual trust. During the different stages of the process, French experts shared their best practices so Hungarian and Romanian cross-border actors could adapt them as models. Conferences have been organised every two years from 2012 to 2017, after which stakeholders meet annually. The earlier seminars covered a wide range of topics such as governance, development of short supply chains or public transport.

The seminar this year focused on the topic of integrated cross-border planning. Around 35 cross-border actors from France, Romania and Hungary were present at the event where 4 French, 2 Hungarian and 2 Romanian experts presented various cooperation tools or projects to the audience.

Véronique Veyrat, manager of the Interreg France-Italy ALCOTRA programme started with introducing the way of implementation of cross-border integrated plans called ’PITEM’ and ’PITER’. At the French-Italian border the integrated plans are implemented either by theme (PITEM) or by territory (PITER). They are composed of multiple single projects that all support a common strategy and contribute to solve cross-border challenges such as environmental problems nt he ALCOTRA programme area. Integrated plans have to meet some criteria: they can include 5 projects, they must be implemented in 4 years (5 years in the next programme of 2021-2027), they must have a coordinator and they must regroup multiple partners (10 at maximum). Integrated plans are important and interesting in the way they use cooperation tools that are consistent with the complexity of the territorial and thematic issues of the programme.

Thibault Devillard, policy expert of MOT, talked about the French models of cross-border governance, highlighting the significance of multi-level governance, mentioning several examples as well. According to him, it does make sense to interlink the functions available on two sides of the border and the institutions providing with these functions in order to enable them to develop joint projects. By bringing three different border areas (i.e. Greater Geneva, the region of Lille, and the Basque coastal conurbation) as examples, Mr. Devillard demonstrated that there are no two uniform cooperation models, but even if the territories are different, cooperation is still possible.

Szilveszter Holop deputy head of the Slovakia-Hungary Interreg CBC programme’s Joint Secretariat underlined that in order for a cross-border cooperation to be successful and innovative five ingredients are needed: trust, courage, self-correction ability, simplification, and innovation. In his presentation he focused on the experiences of the territorial action plans for employment (the so-called TAPEs).  The French-Italian tool alike, within the TAPEs several projects can be implemented in parallel in an integrated manner and therefore more efficiently from a territorial point of view. He spoke briefly about the eight selected TAPEs and also presented the lessons of the Small Project Fund.

Finally, two Romanian-Hungarian examples have been presented by Hadrian Borcea head of the Bihor County Mobile Emergency, Resuscitation and Rescue Service and President of the SARTISS association; and by Tibor László representative of the Oradea Local Transport Company. The first example was about a Romanian-Hungarian project between the disaster prevention departments with the aim of creating a map of the problems faced by these teams. The project identified many challenges such as language, procedural, competency or even border crossing difficulties since Romania is not part of the Schengen area. Some of these difficulties have been solved thanks to language courses and joint trainings but the issue of Schengen is still prevailing. The second project tackled cooperation between the transport companies of the cities of Oradea and Debrecen. The project mostly aims at easing mobility but it also has a positive environmental impact in the region. Besides, the project required innovative, modern, and technical developments with a view to making public transport an attractive alternative for the citizens of the region around Oradea and Debrecen.

The presentations demonstrated that cross-border cooperation is more advanced at the French borders but, considering the problems, also similarities with the Hungarian-Romanian border may occur. Cross-border cooperation requires time and integrated plans that are designed and implemented step by step. The Hungarian-Romanian cross-border cooperation is still somewhat complicated due to the low level of trust and the sense of competition (instead of cooperation) between the cities. Nonetheless, cross-border tools such as PITEM and PITER would allow Romanian and Hungarian actors to tackle jointly a common problem along a joint strategy.

For the detailed agenda, presentations and photos please visit the seminar’s site. 

Honlapunk a Külgazdasági és Külügyminisztérium támogatásával készült.

Külgazdasági és Külügyminisztérium