Via Carpatia development workshop

The Via Carpathia European Grouping for Territorial Cooperation organised a meeting in Košice on 9 February 2023, with the goal of developing tourism-related projects planned for the current programming period, and organising their regional-level management. The meeting focused on building partnerships within the priority axis 2.4.2 of the INTERREG VI-A Hungary-Slovakia Programme: Complex development of tourism destinations. The goal of the meeting was to promote the elaboration of a tourism action plan for the Gemer region.

Several mayors, NGO leaders and entrepreneurs attended the meeting held at the EGTC’s headquarters in Košice. CESCI was represented at the event by Mátyás Jaschitz, Director, and Roland Hesz, Chief Analyst. In the first part of the event, the director of CESCI gave an interactive presentation, during which, he briefly introduced the concept of active tourism, and gave an overview of Gemer region’s current tourism situation. Furthermore, he involved the audience by inviting them to further elaborate on the tourism situation, the characteristics and the potential of the region. He also asked the participants to introduce their related development ideas, and to share their experiences. This way, all the participants had the chance to present their specific suggestions or outline ideas, which can serve as a basis for future joint projects. The participants were asked to hand in their initial ideas to the EGTC in a written form as well, including the main features of the ideas. A digital form was provided by CESCI after the meeting to fill out the data sheets with the details of the development ideas.

Afterwards, Julianna Orbán Máté, Director of Via Carpatia EGTC, talked about the expected conditions of the calls for proposals, and also covered the possible financial, funding and scheduling challenges. She said that so far they see equestrian tourism as a possible basis for a tourism action plan similar to TAPE, using project integration. Furthermore, she reported on the work the EGTC have done so far in this field, and she said that they plan to request a funding of EUR 5-5.5 million. The EGTC aims to gather at least 15 partners, who will undertake the regional coordination and development of the integrated active tourism project package to be elaborated. The EGTC director also announced, that the Joint Secretariat of the Cross-border Cooperation Programme is expected to launch the call for proposals in autumn 2023. Therefore, the first round of assessment will expectably take place around spring 2024, which will require an elaborated action plan.

In order to support the successful preparation, it is planned to organise further meetings in the next period on a monthly basis, which will promote synergic partnership building and project development. The next meeting will take place in the second part of March, by which, the partners should be able to present an indicative budget. With the same deadline, the EGTC is accepting recommendations regarding the involvement of further partners.

CESCI is planning on conducting interviews with the project owners and other important regional actors. CESCI will elaborate a comprehensive active tourism action plan, thus, creating a coherent development plan based on local energies to support the objectives of the programme. The above-mentioned meeting in February was an important step in the preparation of the Gemer region’s action plan.