What happens when local producers are close to their customers — but a national border stands in the way?
The pilot action was implemented in the Ister-Granum cross-border region between Slovakia and Hungary, building on more than a decade of cooperation to strengthen local economies, short supply chains and the visibility of local products.
Despite the close geographical, cultural and economic links between producers and consumers on both sides of the border, different national regulations, administrative procedures and market requirements can make cross-border sales challenging, particularly for small-scale producers.
The pilot explored a practical cross-border approach to addressing these challenges by identifying the legal, administrative and market barriers that producers face when accessing the neighbouring market.
A key outcome is the Local Product Support Guide – a practical information tool for small-scale producers interested in selling their products across the Hungarian-Slovak border. By bringing together information on registration, taxation, labelling, food safety, retail and other requirements, the guide makes the cross-border market environment more transparent and helps producers better understand what entering the neighbouring market involves.
The Ister-Granum EGTC is seated in Esztergom, Hungary, 50 km north of Budapest. The geographical boundaries of the Ister-Granum EGTC are marked by the municipalities located around Esztergom-Štúrovo in a distance of approximately 30 km. The region covers an area of approximately 2 500 km².
The border runs along the Danube River, which forms a natural border between Hungary and Slovakia. The border between Esztergom and Štúrovo can be crossed via the Mária Valéria bridge, which directly connects the two towns. In addition, there are several other road, water and rail crossings in the region that allow free movement between the two countries.
General objective: Strengthening sustainable forms of farming and supporting the growth of local producers and businesses in the border region.
Specific objective: Improving the market availability of local products to support sustainable forms of farming.
One of the main development priorities of the Ister-Granum EGTC is to support market access for local producers. Within this framework, the EGTC aims to promote cross-border development and to address legal barriers, thereby strengthening the environmental awareness of local populations and ensuring their access to healthy local food.
The justification for and need for PILOT is primarily based on the geographical characteristics of the region. Southern Slovakia is an agricultural region with many local producers. Their access to the market not only helps to diversify the regional economy and maintain environmentally sound farming practices, but also to ensure that the people of the region have access to healthy food. In this respect, people living in border regions are also generally disadvantaged, as the rules on local products are under national jurisdiction and governments do prevent local products from being sold across borders in order to protect national agricultural production. Therefore, the population of border regions only has 180-degree access to these products, and can only obtain local products produced on the other side of the border if they know they exist and buy them on the other side. However, cross-border supply is not allowed by law, or only under very heavy administrative and financial burdens.
Over the past decade, Ister-Granum EGTC has made several attempts to process, interpret and present the ever-changing national legislation, as it is these rules that set the framework for the marketing of local producers across borders. The market of the shopping community in Esztergom was quickly taken over by Slovakian traditional producers, but due to a lack of knowledge of the legislation they were unable to do so properly and were banned by the authorities. This means that not only do the population not have full access to healthy food, but local producers also have problems operating economically, as they too can only reach their potential customers in a 180-degree circle.
Although local markets in the Euroregion offer opportunities for buying and selling, awareness of these is not widespread among the local population. There is therefore a need to inform the local population and to increase their commitment to local products. In addition, the distribution of local products to larger consumers (e.g. hotels, restaurants, educational, health and social institutions, etc.) should be facilitated, which can make local producers’ operations more sustainable while reducing the ecological footprint of their own food systems.
Overall, this can contribute to a stronger Euroregional identity and a sense of cross-border regional belonging, thus weakening the divisive effect of borders.
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.