How can citizens become a more permanent part of cross-border governance?
The pilot was implemented in Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice, two cities on the German-Polish border with a long history of cross-border cooperation. Every day, people live, study, work and use services across the border. Yet opportunities for citizens to participate in shaping their shared future remain largely organised within separate national and municipal systems.
The pilot tested a citizen-oriented approach to cross-border governance, bringing residents and local stakeholders into structured dialogue about the challenges, differences and opportunities they experience in everyday cross-border life. Rather than creating new cooperation structures from scratch, it explored how existing institutional cooperation could become more participatory, stable and meaningful for citizens.
At the heart of the pilot is the Cross-Border Citizen Dialogue and Citizen Council Model – a practical approach that connects recurring citizen dialogue, citizen representation and a structured mechanism for bringing recommendations into political and administrative decision-making.
The City of Frankfurt (Oder) and the Municipality of Słubice are located on the German-Polish border, with the Oder river being the “heart” of the twin-city. The City of Frankfurt (Oder) cooperates since 2003 very closely with the Municipality of Słubice and with other European border regions and cities. Since 2010, Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice are considering themselves as “European Double City” and provide therefore a large record and experience on cross-border governance to the partnership.
Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice have joint decision making and working structures like the Joint Assembly of City Councils, the Joint City Council Committee, steering group and working groups on all cooperation matters. The Cooperation Center exists since 2011, its task is the coordination of the cross-border cooperation and the realisation of common strategies, goals and projects. The cooperation is based on the Frankfurt-Słubice Action Plan. The first joint action plan covered the period 2010-2020 and was adopted by both city councils in 2010 and updated in 2014. The current Frankfurt-Slubice Action Plan for the period 2020-2030 was adopted in December 2019. Its priorities include education, quality of life, infrastructure & services, economic development and communication & participation.
General objective: Contribution to a deeper European integration process and the strengthening of democracy, based on an exemplary citizens dialogue, whose experiences can be transferred to other European border regions.
Specific objective: To deepen and capitalise the twin-city dialogue methods with a view to improving the conditions for enhanced local democracies and cohesion
It seems that during the last several years all over Europe and among people of very different parts of the society a feeling of fear increased. Fear to lose economic well-being, to suffer from the consequences of climate change, to lose cultural identity in a more and more multicultural world and, since February 2022, to become involved in war and military operations.
People experience a frightening gap between these and other challenges on the one side and their own personal abilities to struggle with them on the other side. For all troubles they blame the government, sometimes “those in Brussels” or in general “those up there” and “others” like foreigners, immigrants, the richest, and so on. This comes along with increasing mistrust in democracy, in democratic institutions and leads nearly everywhere in Europe to a stronger support for nationalist, populist, anti-democratic parties and an increasing social division.
In the European Twin-City Frankfurt (Oder)–Słubice we experienced on the one hand throughout the multiple crises since 2020 (Covid pandemic and border closures, ecological disaster of the Oder river, Russian attacks against the Ukraine with millions of refugees, introduction of border controls between Germany and Poland) that in times of crisis negative national stereotypes arise – with negative impact also on cross-border cooperation and daily life. On the other hand, we experienced during joint projects in 2022/2023 that open cross-border dialogues about these challenges and our feelings can have a positive, even somehow healing effect.
So what’s the special impact about that in cross-border twin-cities? In our cities we are part of different worlds, which means countries and languages, which is even more the case in twin-cities and border regions which were until 1989 separated by the iron curtain. Today we are still living, although door to door, in different countries. And at the same time we are sharing the same European, cross-border urban space, crossing the border each day. In such a micro-climate a joint dialogue is possible, which considers different perspectives as respectable and true, and therefore sometimes creates a common ground, helping to experience the positive effect of cooperation despite of national and other differences, to regain a consideration of empowerness and self-effectiveness – as being part of a diverse society, with solidarity and cooperation as shared values.
We found these experiences worthful and encouraging enough to intensify the work on appropriate dialogue formats, to involve more citizens from our and other twin-cities, and to share them with partners in the project and in the CENTRAL EUROPE programme area. We want to invite participants of other European twin-cities to discuss and learn about how people from very different contexts still manage to live together – with the goal to generate insights not only for other twin-cities, but for European city societies in general. Therefore, the motto of our dialogue format will be: “Dealing with difference”.
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“Dealing with difference” has two sides for us. On the one side, “difference” can be a source of insecurity or even threat in these times of multiple crises. On the other side, it can also be a tremendous resource on how to approach social challenges within urban societies – and especially within cross-border twin-cities. And it is this shared experience of “dealing with difference” that cross-border twin-cities (and other cities with multicultural backgrounds) can use for a dialogue about how to integrate different perspectives and views of the world.
We believe that the ability of “dealing with difference” is crucial when facing today’s multiple challenges of living together – especially in times when the public dialogue culture becomes increasingly confrontational, and it seems harder and harder to actually talk to each other about our differences. We are convinced that being able to deal with difference can be helpful to overcome challenges together – whether it is in twin-cities, smaller cities, bigger cities or any other type of urban environment.
Citizens of twin-cities are designated to talk about how to deal with difference, having specific experience in being regularly confronted with different perspectives and beliefs of “the other side” in their own city. Thus, during the 1st twin-city dialogue forum in 2025, we want to discuss with different people from different twin-cities about how to deal with exactly that aspect: difference.
What makes the setting of the dialogue forum unique is to combine 1) the participants’ already existing experience of cross-border dialogue inside their own twin-city context with 2) the exposure to unfamiliar and unknown dialogue partners from other cities, therefore creating both a place where own stories in dealing with difference can be shared while also enabling the self-experience of discussing pressing issues, controversial topics and common fears with people that usually would not talk to each other. The goal therefore is not to re-educate anyone, but to learn how different perspectives can manage to deal with each other.
We are planning to invite to each dialogue forum two other twin-cities with 10+10 participants from each twin-city, resulting in approx. 60 participants during each dialogue forum. The common language will be English. The participants should represent three groups: politics, associations and citizens, including people from different social and professional background and age – especially including young people, pupils and students.
This section will be updated following the release of the final pilot report.
This section will be updated following the release of the final pilot report.
This platform has been developed within the BorderLabs CE project, supported by the Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE Programme with co-financing from the European Union. Its content, including any analyses, interpretations, opinions, forecasts and recommendations, is the sole responsibility of the authors and the project partnership and does not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE Programme, its programme bodies or the European Union.
This platform has been developed within the BorderLabs CE project, supported by the Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE Programme with co-financing from the European Union. Its content, including any analyses, interpretations, opinions, forecasts and recommendations, is the sole responsibility of the authors and the project partnership and does not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE Programme, its programme bodies or the European Union.