The Border Focal Point Network is delighted to announce the speakers for the 5th edition of the ‘Beyond Borders: Breakfast Debate’ series. The event, inspired by the soon-to-be-published European Commission’s “Study on public transport in cross-border regions: Mapping of existing services and related legal obstacles”, will take place on 2nd December 2021 from 10:00 CET to 11:10 CET. 

The event will be introduced by Pascal Boijmans, Head of Unit, DG REGIO. Pascal Boijmans will present the report and highlight the critical importance of cross border public transport and the development of services as one central means to facilitate cross-border activities. 

The event will also be an opportunity to present the web-viewer displaying the different transport modes, stops and routes throughout Europe. This web-viewer will be presented by Sabine Zillmer and Claudia De Stasio.

Dr Sabine Zillmer is Partner & Head of Berlin office at Spatial Foresight, where she specialises in socio-economic analyses at different territorial scales and regional and territorial policies with a particular view to cross-border challenges and solutions. She has worked for numerous clients ranging from the European Commission and Interreg programmes to national and regional ministries in these fields by doing research as well as organising and facilitating stakeholder engagement.

Claudia De Stasio is Senior Expert at TRT Trasporti e Territorio. Since 2001, she has developed a significant experience in transport modelling at regional level working on several feasibility studies for main road transport infrastructures. In 2007, she joined TRT and she has been involved in transport modelling at European level, working in Research Projects funded by European Commission. 

The discussion will then continue with a local cross borders public transport service: the Berlin-Kostrzyn nad Odrą train connection service (DE-PL), presented by Max Göthel, who works as Employee supply and infrastructure at Verkehrsverbund Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH, where he specialises on regional rail services supply and demand planning focusing on timetabling and cross border services.

After the presentation of the cross-border services, a panel discussion involving all speakers will follow on the the role of integrated cross-border public transport in realising the vision of the Single Market. In this discussion, current speakers will be joined by Artur Perchel, Loic Delhuvenne, and Ricardo Ferreira

Artur Perchel is Deputy Director of the Europe Department of the International Association of Public Transport (UITP) at its headquarters in Brussels, where he supports the daily management and strategy formulation of the UITP Europe Department. Previously, Artur managed all of UITP’s operations and activities in the Central Eastern Europe region, and in Israel. Besides, Artur acts as a thematic expert for EU Funds and Financing.

Loïc Delhuvenne has been the Director-General of the Agency of the Eurometropolis Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai since 2016. Prior to his current appointment, he had served multiple roles in the administration of local and regional governments in Belgium, as an advisor on transregional policy. In particular, between 2012 and 2016 he was an Expert for the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles for European cohesion funds and European Territorial Cooperation.

Ricardo Ferreira is the coordinator of the Border Focal Point Network in European Commission’s DG REGIO in the unit for Cross-Border Cooperation.

Interested in joining the conversation? Register here.