ABSTRACT
The German-Polish Treaties of November 1990 and June 1991 reconfirmed the Oder and Neisse Rivers as the permanent boundaries between the two countries and established cooperation frameworks based on principles of good neighbourliness and peaceful coexistence. It represents a genuine German-Polish rapprochement and an indispensable precondition for the development of cross-border planning cooperation. Cross-border cooperation has offered considerable potential for developing local government capacities, local networks and civil society initiatives. The chapter discusses certain historical and geopolitical issues, starting with the complex territorial shifts the Polish state and its boundaries have undergone over the centuries. It also discusses attitudes of the local citizenry towards their neighbours and concludes that tenacious stereotypes are slowly giving way to a more 'open' notion of region. Early involvement of Poland's western regions in the European Union (EU)-financed PHARE programmes, and especially the Polish-German CBC programme, was indisputably a positive factor in the postsocialist transformation and development of these regions.
