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Everyday tales and stories from the border regions of Europe and beyond, with the aim of explaining why we border-crossers are as obsessed as we are about this subject, why it is important to all of us, and why the co-operation community needs a little bit more visibility than it normally gets.



Friday, 17 August 2007

The end of one-way co-operation?

Over on the right in the news section is a link to a Romanian story about the relaunch of a PHARE CBC call between Romania and Bulgaria (17 Aug). Why in Romanian, you ask? Well, aside from the fact that we should all learn a foreign language (Buna Ziua to my Romanian readers), the story seems to be available only in Romanian.

Not very useful for the Bulgarian partners, you might say - and you'd be right. This is symptomatic of the old way of doing cross-border co-operation: you do your projects, and I'll do mine. I should add that it is not entirely the countries' fault - PHARE CBC was never the most user-friendly programme in the world. And I hear very good things about Romania and Bulgaria's preparations for the new round of programmes starting later this year. However, it's still a bit depressing to see such blatant national approaches to co-operation in 2007. Let's make it the last time...

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