Border controls, compulsory testing, gloomy neighborhoods – the connections between Bavaria and the Czech Republic were cut for months during the pandemic. Now new impetus is to come into the relations between Bavarian and Czech municipalities. “We all now feel the unconditional desire to exchange ideas again,” said Wunsiedler District Administrator Peter Berek (CSU), who is also President of the Bavarian working group Euregio Egrensis. We are now in the starting blocks for a new funding period. “The old projects are being completed, new ones are being set up. There are many ideas, considerations and concrete concepts in motion in the region.”
In May, the Bavarian-Czech Friendship Weeks officially begin in Selb and in Asch in the Czech Republic. An intensive exchange has been maintained here for a long time. “This will now culminate in 2023 in an excellent program of events with a lot of encounters here and there,” says Berek. His district is also currently working on a funding project in cooperation with the Federal Ministry of Economics to strengthen the transnational economic region Fichtelgebirge-Karlsbad – this also involves tourism and the baths, the health economy and the exchange of goods and workers. Projects funded by Euregio Egrensis also focus on youth work and the elimination of language barriers. As part of the Corona measures, the border was temporarily closed. That was a difficult time, said Berek. “It’s also pointless now to think about whether you would do it all again, for example the border closure.”
Mainly because of the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans after the war, the neighborhood was tense on a political level for a long time. Prime Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) initiated the end of the “Ice Age” during a historic visit to Prague in 2010. Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) visited the Czech capital last summer, it was his first official visit since taking office in 2018. With a trade volume of 113 billion euros in 2022, the Czech Republic is one of Germany’s ten largest trading partners and has now overtaken Great Britain, a quarter of the The sum is allotted to Bavaria, said Chamer state parliamentarian Gerhard Hopp (CSU). “Knowing that you have reliable partners at your side, especially in these uncertain times, must be an incentive to continue to promote the integration of the East Bavarian border regions.” Hopp and the Upper Palatinate MEP Christian Doleschal (CSU) had drawn up a twelve-point plan to strengthen cross-border relations last year.