Experts opinion: at the border of demarcation

Officials are eager to discuss the issue of cross-border cooperation. It appears that there is something to be proud of in this field and nothing much to hide. However, remembering that there is always room for improvement, let us analyze what could be better if Belarus was closer to Europe. Below are the opinions of the experts of eurobelarus.info

Cross-border cooperation is an area where ideology has little influence

Vladimir Matskevich:

- Firstly, effiecient management of border areas is essential to keep people, especially young people, inside the country. People living in border areas travel to neighbouring countries more frequently so  they see and understand more. The borders are being fortified so as to prevent those people from running away.

Secondly, cross-border cooperation projects are a substantial source of income for Belarus. In the beginning of the 90s Belarus frquently lost out in the competition for European Programmes due to slow thinking and inflexibility. For example, I recall a situation in 1992 when the European Union was allocating funds to Poland for organizing border crossing points. The funds were transferred in several tranches and there was an issue regarding Poland setting up another border crossing point with its Eastern neighbour. A tender was announced to collect proposals from the East: Lithuania, Belarus and Kaliningrad Oblast were competing with each other to host this crossing point into Poland and Belarus lost. What is a border crossing point? It is a working place for customs and border officials, services, money, currency conversion, etc.

If I remember correctly, Lithuania won that tender. By the end of the 90's the Belarusian regime had figured out the benefits of such practices. Ideology for the Belarusian regime is merely the toss of a coin. Once they realised all the benefits, particularly the influx of funds, etc they stopped 'playing to lose' so often.

Tatiana Vodolazhskaya:

– Cross-border cooperation is primarily based upon the technical organization of the border. This doesn't require ideological flexibility from Belarus or changes in values. Cooperation is based on common interests related to ensuring security, suppressing smuggling and human trafficking…

Andrey Yegorov:

– Europe has a very pragmatic approach to these issues. It knows exactly what it wants from organizing cross-border cooperation in this manner. Europe's goals are clear, precise and also not obviously dangerous to Belarusian regime in an ideological sense. These projects have a different character compared with projects supporting NGOs and so forth. Moreover, the cross-border cooperation projects are implemented in partnership with  state bodies: Border Committee, etc, i.e. they are under full state control.

Borders limit us

Vladimir Matskevich:

– There are significant difficulties developing tourist business under current conditions because it is hard to attract investment. Those regions which could be at the forefront of Small and Medium Enterprise development are moving backwards due to the policies of the current regime. This is so even in the comparison with Soviet times. Let's take Grodno for example, in Soviet times Grodno was a very important railroad link between Riga, St. Petersburg and Vilnius towards Warsaw.

Nowadays Grodno's status as a large, international railroad hub has been destroyed; there are no trains going from Grodno to Europe. One has to go to Brest. Grodno airport is in decay as well. It became an terminus of the railroad and the same in respect of coaches. All of this happened to a city that always existed in the border region and has always been the most 'European' city in Belarus. There were also plans to set up trolleybus line between Grodno and Druskinenkai. Druskinenkai has always been a rural vacation area of Grodno. Today, there is Lithuania on one hand and Poland on the other and Grodno is a desolate place!

Andrey Yegorov:

– The closed nature of our borders also causes difficulties at the administrative level. It takes about 1.5 days to reach Vitebsk, an administrative Centre, from Verkhnedvinsk. If one could go via Latvia, it would only take a few hours, however, there are two borders in the way.

Vladimir Matskevich:

– Avgustovsky Channel and all of Brest Oblast constitute cultural relics of Polish history. Any amateur historian of Mitskevich and Baliaslaw Prus would feel honoured to visit these historical places, as described in their native works and biographies. Tourism could be self promoting and would not need the advertisement of routes for Polish people as they know of places as such as 'Svitsiazianki' and others from their childhood. That could be a gold mine. But, no, however… Not yet.

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