The afternoon panel discussions were followed by the official launch of the European Cross-Border Platform, set up by the Committee of the Regions to enable stakeholders to meet and discuss the specific circumstances and needs of cross-border communities, enabling them to contact with the EU institutions through the Committee of the Regions. The platform was presented and proposed by two members of the steering committee, Pavel Branda and Martín Guillermo-Ramírez, who then announced the launch of the third call for the b-solutions initiative. The aim of the initiative is to help identify and remove legal obstacles in border regions. To conclude the professional programme of the event, Mr Szakács summarised the conference and briefly presented the declaration on the 35th anniversary of the launch of Interreg, which had been signed by 23 programme authorities still operating at the time of the event. He indicated that other programmes could do the same by the end of November.

To break up the busy professional programme, participants were able to relax with a concert by the acapella group Fool Moon and a gala dinner afterwards.

As the final programme of the Art of Cooperation conference, some of the participants visited Esztergom on Friday for a study trip, where they could learn about the activities, projects and achievements of Ister-Granum EGTC and taste local food products from producers who are part of a cross-border network of labelled local products. The participants were greeted by the mayors of Esztergom and Párkány and then by Péter Nagy, Director of Ister-Granum EGTC, who presented the activities of the grouping in the St. Adalbert Centre. During the afternoon, there were three different routes to choose from. In Želiezovce, participants could visit the Esterházy family’s classicist castle and the new tourist centre under construction (with a tour of the site after a presentation on the projects). As the Esterházy family employed the famous hotel owner and confectioner Franz Sacher, they could also taste the famous Sacher cake. Those who chose the second route had the opportunity to visit the “Viza” visitor and local products centre in Štúrovo, near Slovakia’s most popular termal bath, and the local products market and community centre in Svodín. The third itinerary included a visit to the cross-border cargo-ferry, co-funded by the Interreg Slovakia-Hungary programme, which provides transport facilities between the highly industrialised Hungarian side of the Danube and the logistically strong Slovak side. This study tour ended in Kravany nad Dunajom, where, in addition to tasting local flavours, participants were given an overview of the results of small-scale cross-border interventions.