Transnational Approaches in an Enlarged Europe: Presenting an INTERREG II C Project as Product of an Emerging Epistemic Community ‘European Spatial Development’

Since the beginning of the 1990s the consensus is that a close connection has to be established between the EU and Central and Eastern European countries. In seeking to strengthen this relationship, the preamble of the Treaty of the European Union has specifically emphasized the achievement of a closer cooperation of all European nations. With the EU accession of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia, eight out of the 10 Central and Eastern European candidate countries have reached the status of full EU members in 2004. Bulgaria and Romania are determined to follow in their footsteps in the year 2007. These countries represent a challenge to joint European spatial development, as well as a special chance for integration.