Project title: The borderline as an axis of innovation

ID number: HU-SRB/0901/213/028 INNOAXIS

Lead Beneficiary: Centre for Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA RKK)

Project Partner: Regional Scientific Association (RTT)

Associated Partner: Local Government of Mórahalom (Mórahalom)

 
The project aims at a coordinated study on the development potentials of the cross-border region of Serbia and Hungary, implemented by a joint activity of a state-run research institute from Hungary and an NGO dedicated to scientific research from Serbia. The main idea of the project is a long term sustainable development of the cross-border region, by strengthening cooperation and common exploitation of socio-economical opportunities, based on our concept of the borderline as an axis of innovation.
 

The project consists of a review of the present development potentials by the analysis of existing planning documents, followed by the creation and public debate of 8 sectoral strategies regarding the target area as a coherent socio-economic region, finalising in the formulation of an operative programme for the development of the cross-border region, as well as its presentation to the stakeholders concerned, having been involved in the planning process since its beginning.

 

The project is strongly related by an initiative of 140 local authorities from Hungary, Serbia and Romania, to form an EGTC called Banat-Triplex Confinium (BTC). The role of the project within this initiative would be to provide a practical and scientific background material for the realisation of EGTC, compensating the shortage of necessity-oriented planning documents at the microregion level, as well as the lack of development strategies below the state level in Serbia.

 

The target area of the project covers two districts of Serbia and 8 microregions of Hungary, including the towns of Szeged, Subotica, Sombor and Baja, home of a population of slightly more than 800,000. The implementation of the project could serve as a suitable model of both cross-border planning and involvement of stakeholders, for the neighbouring cross-border regions along the borderlines of Romania, Hungary, Serbia and Croatia.

 

Strengthening cross-border cooperation, partnership, as well as the role of the target area as a gate of the Balkans – already concieved in the development conceptions of South Hungary – are among the principal horizontal aims of the planned project.