An Emerging Central European Cross-Border Metropolis. Final conference of the Resilient Borders project

As an outcome of the workshops held within the framework of the #ACCESS project, the City of Bratislava and the Győr-Moson-Sopron County Council successfully applied for funding at the Resilient Borders call in 2024. The project was accomplished on 26 September 2025 in Győr, with the final conference summarising the results and achievements.

The Resilient Borders is an initiative of the European Commission, launched as an answer to the challenges generated by the COVID-19 pandemic in cross-border regions. The programme is managed by the Association of European Border Regions (AEBR) and the Mission Opérationnelle Transfrontalière (MOT). The two organisations published their call for pilot actions in the fields of cross-border spatial planning and coordinated response to crises in October 2024.

City of Bratislava and the Győr-Moson-Sopron County Council compiled a project proposal addressing the challenges stemming from cross-border suburbanisation around the Slovak capital. The pilot action, "Cross-border Integration of the Functional Metropolitan Area of Bratislava", started in February 2025, aimed to deliver an action plan referring to the governance options of the trinational cross-border region and the thematic fields where joint planning is necessary. To reach the project’s goals, the partners contracted CESCI, which was assigned to coordinate the workshops and draft the action plan.

At the first workshop held in Bratislava, the representatives of the Hungarian municipalities affected the most by Bratislava’s cross-border urban sprawl were given an outlook on the existing Slovak-Austrian structure (the baum_cityregion), promoting the joint management of the cross-border region. The second workshop held in Rajka, involving the Austrian mayors as well, was extremely successful, so that the participants organised another in Kittsee. The local leaders exchanged their experiences with the new Slovak residents. The third workshop was dedicated to planning issues with the participation of regional development experts and planners from the three countries. At the final workshop, the representatives of the two partners discussed the results of the previous workshops. The team of CESCI has developed the action plan based on these results, a broad literature review, an online survey addressing the Hungarian municipalities, and the discussions led during the Steering Group meeting on 9 September.

The outcomes of the project were presented at the closing conference in Győr, on 26 September, where all the participants of the workshops, and further interested parties were invited. The participants were greeted by Mr Csaba Balogh, Ambassador of Hungary to Bratislava, Mr György Hámori, President of Győr-Moson-Sopron County Council, and Mr Metod Špaček, Deputy Director of the City Hall of Bratislava. All of them greeted the initiative through which the Hungarian partners can join the existing structure created by the Slovak and Austrian partners.

Mr Christian Berger, Austrian coordinator of the baum_cityregion initiative, presented the emerging challenges to the cross-border agglomeration and the existing management structure. Ms Pavla Štefkovičová, Slovak coordinator of the baum_cityregion initiative, summarised the activities and the outcomes of the Resilient Borders project. Mr Gyula Ocskay, secretary general of CESCI, wrapped up the results of the project through the presentation of the action plan, which includes a state-of-play analysis, ten thematic and one governance-related actions. He also mentioned that the members of the Steering Group of the baum_cityregion initiative, together with the representative of the Hungarian county council, decided to advance step-by-step: the recently established Working Community will be completed with the Hungarian party holding an observer status.

The second panel included two presentations enlarging the horizon of the project. Mr Roland Hesz, senior analyst of CESCI, summarised the results of the ESPON CROSSGOV project focusing on cross-border functional regions within the EU. Mr Markus Kleinfercher, senior project manager at EIT Manufacturing, spotlighted the interconnectedness of Vienna and Bratislava in the field of innovation, and its promotion through the Twin City Future Innovation Manufacturing Hub project.

The final conference’ last momentum was a round-table discussion involving Mr Metod Špaček and Mr Bruno Konečný (advisor of the mayor of Bratislava) from Slovakia, Mr Hannes Klein (Head of the General Transport Coordination Department of the Federal State of Burgenland) and Mr Johannes Haselsteiner (Spatial Planning Officer at the Regional Planning and Transport Affairs Department of the Federal State of Lower Austria) from Austria, as well as Mr Ferenc Ivanics (Vice-President of Győr-Moson-Sopron County Council) and Mr Ádám Páthy (Research Fellow, HUN-REN Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Institute for Regional Studies) from Hungary. The panel was moderated by Gyula Ocskay, who invited the participants to share their opinions about the positive and negative effects of Bratislava’s cross-border suburbanisation. The speakers evaluated the phenomenon as an organic and rather positive process, which produces challenges, especially in the field of transport and the environment. They underlined the shared cultural-historic background of the three countries, facilitating smooth integration. Mr Ocskay also asked them about the most urgent issue they would tackle if they had the power and financing. Apart from already-mentioned challenges, several participants pointed to governance as the key. Mr Ivanics drew attention to the fact that this was the Resilient Borders project, which convened the three parties for the first time. Without communication and encounters, the enumerated challenges cannot be tackled, which was a common message of the event.

In the closing remarks given by Ms Štefkovičová, Mr Berger and Mr Ivanics, the speakers expressed their wish to continue the joint work within the Working Community and beyond.