Local/Regional Economic Development in South ... - Value Chains

50 • Strategy: Identifying themes of common interest on
the basis of previous cross-border activities, in order
to maximize benefits to this European region
• Regional development plan: Creating a super-ordinate
regional development perspective
• Co-operation structure: Investigating, conceiving and
compiling proposals for a binding, multilateral cooperation
structure to support the politically defined
co-operation in CENTROPE
• Information and public relations work: Press or information
activities, including jointly marketing the
European region to its citizens
• Pilot projects: Developing and implementing pilot
projects with particularly high relevance for the formation
and establishment of CENTROPE
In 2004 several goals for the preliminary phase were established,
such as to include and co-operate with institutions
and firms, and to enlist neighboring countries to Austria,
as equal partners in CENTROPE, particularly through
them successfully submitting and co-financing their own
CENTROPE mirror projects in INTERREG.
Organization of cross-border co-operation
Until early 2006 CENTROPE was organized as an Austrian
INTERREG IIIA project with the following structures:
A Steering Committee in which the administrative officials
of the three Austrian states are represented, together
with the CENTROPE Advisory Board, on which sit two
politicians or administrative officials from each participating
region and city. Ideally the 2 delegates from the regions
or cities should either come from mid level politics,
for example the members of provincial parliaments or the
chairpersons of the European Commission (a legislative
political level), or secondly be a representative from toplevel
administration, such as department heads or directors
(executive level).
The Advisory Board is currently dominated by experts
from regional administrations. The Board
• is the institutionalized, moderated working forum to
discuss the form and content of the CENTROPE region,
and provides the means of interaction between
official representatives from participating regions;
• is the key committee for the cross-border establishment
and implementation of the CENTROPE project
on political and administrative levels, for the new
EU neighbors;
• is a preliminary level of the multilateral steering committee
that is to be established for CENTROPE;
• provides technical and political advice, and elicits
contributions from politics and administration to develop
CENTROPE;
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provides impetus and makes suggestions for crossborder
activities, pilot projects and other areas of involvement;
advertises CENTROPE, participates in the concept
and outcomes of CENTROPE, and provides the link
to INTERREG advisory boards;
does not have formal decision-making authority in
the CENTROPE project.
The CENTROPE Platform is a public forum in which
interested or newly enlisted individuals, institutions, organizations
and the different sponsors of cross-border projects,
from the border quadrangle are informed about the
activities of CENTROPE. Also it serves to garner support,
suggestions and critical reflections from newly enlisted or
interested parties that can enhance CENTROPE’s work,
as well as sponsoring presentations, lectures and panel discussions
for newly enlisted parties to participate, or where
topics are prepared specifically to address issues relevant
to them. In contrast to the Advisory Board, the Platform
is extremely flexible and informal, can change its constitution,
increase or decrease in size, focus on specific sectors
such as cultural identity, economy, research, education
and transportation, and does not insist on continuous
membership commitment.
The CENTROPE Consortium. The three Austrian states
sponsoring the INTERREG project assigned the CEN-
TROPE Consortium the management, co-ordination and
leadership responsibilities of operational activities. The
regional development and business agencies of the three
states and two firms that specialize in cross-border and
European co-operation, work in the Consortium. It cooperates
with a large number of partner firms for project
implementation.
Results of the cross-border cooperation
It is too early to draw many conclusions about the results
of CENTROPE’s project in the participating regional systems.
However, after the first two years of CENTROPE’s
work, the following minimum observations can be made
about the effects of the stakeholder systems:
• Austrian stakeholder expectation levels remain low,
but the opportunities to use CENTROPE for one’s
own projects and strategies are being increasingly recognized,
together with a common understanding of
realistic goals and implementation processes.
•
Critics have become observers, and observers have become
stakeholders. Partners in the neighboring countries
have been activated and are much more closely
associated with the project today than they were initially.