Speaker
Description
The fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 triggered a development that led to a re-naissance of intensive interdependencies between Western and Eastern Eu-rope and thus also between Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. The opening of the borders paved the way for the development of neighbourly ex-change relationships, which resulted in an immediate need for mobility.
On the other hand, the following system transformation, which was accompa-nied by deindustrialisation and mass unemployment, has further weakened the border regions, which were already considered structurally weak, and fun-damentally changed the mobility structure: While there was a significant de-cline in intra-regional transport volumes due to the loss of jobs and the result-ing exodus of the population, inter-regional transport volumes, i.e. exchanges between the regions, increased significantly: The remaining population in-creasingly travelled further to pursue gainful employment in the economically strong conurbations. The existing public transport providers, above all the state-run railways, were unable to meet the new mobility needs with a modern transport service at this time. On the other hand, there was strong growth on the roads: The population's desire for individual mobility had become much stronger and easier to fulfil after 1989.
With the increasing permeability of borders as part of the first EU enlargement to the east in 2004, followed by the expansion of the Schengen area in 2007, cross-border mobility has received an additional boost. This has increased fur-ther since the abolition of restrictions on access to the German labour market in 2011, whereby the continuing wage and price gap, in addition to the major shortage of skilled workers in many areas, represents a considerable incentive. For the population in the border regions in particular, commuting to the other side has become part of the reality of life in order to pursue gainful employment or take advantage of services of general interest as well as local amenities and recreation. While the car has been the dominant mode of transport of choice from the outset and remains so, local public transport is increasingly becoming the focus of attention for those involved. In recent years, cross-border services have been established that are increasingly in demand and require further ex-pansion.
The fact that there is no cross-border regulatory framework and that the border forms a dividing line between different political, economic, technical and legal systems also presents the development of local public transport with additional hurdles that have to be overcome and in reality lead to the services only partial-ly meeting the requirements of the population and the political objectives in terms of quantity and quality.
These ambivalent lines of development will be illustrated using the example of the tri-national Euroregion Neisse-Nisa-Nysa, which forms the core of the study presented here.
Biography
Moritz Filter defended his Ph.D. in 2024 on cross-border interdependencies in the German-Polish-Czech border region with a comparative view on cross-border railway connections in Post-Yugoslavian states. He holds a master in European Studies and a B.Sc. in business administration. Moritz has worked as a business manager for IBM (2001-12) and currently works as bid manager for Alstom Transportation (since 2012). In parallel he started his research ca-reer in cross-border transport history and future. Recent publications include: Moritz Filter: Grenzen überschreiten in Pandemiezeiten. Veränderungen der Mobilitätsbeziehungen zwischen der EU und den Westbalkanstaaten. In: Peter Ulrich, Norbert Cyrus, Anne Pilhofer (eds.): Grenzen und Ordnungen in Bewe-gung in Zeiten der Corona-Krise. Analysen zu Region und Gesellschaft. Frankfurt 2020. Moritz Filter: Die wirtschaftliche Integration der Lausitz(en) im Spiegel ihrer verkehrlichen Entwicklung. In: Björn Berghausen, Dirk Schaal (eds.): Die beiden Lausitzen. Wirtschaft, Geschichte und Industriekultur in Brandenburg und Sachsen, Münster, 2015, 29-44
