Denis CERIC, Institute of Geography and Spatial Organisation Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
Marek WIECKOWSKI, Institute of Geography and Spatial Organisation Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
After political changes at the end of the 20th century, a strong commitment to regional cooperation at national, regional and local levels – in both the public and private sectors – has evolved all around the Baltic Sea (Studzieniecki 2016). The importance of tourism to cross-border cooperation and development of borderlands has been recognized and financially supported through the funds by the European Union under the umbrella of the Interreg programmes, which aim at promoting regional development and cooperation across borders.
This paper examines the spatial dimension of cooperation between entities implementing cooperation in the field of tourism through the Baltic Sea. The aim is to identify the spatial characteristics of cross-border cooperation in tourism-related projects across the Baltic Sea co-financed from EU funds Interreg IV (2007-2013) and, therefore, outline the tourism space in the Baltic Sea cross-border area. In total, 1.157 international cooperation projects in the Baltic Sea Region have been analyzed to extract and analyze in detail tourism-related projects. Location, number and roles of entities cooperating, funds they employed for the cooperation, their concentration, mutual distance and activities performed have been researched. The results distinguish several geographically logical cross-sea-border tourism cooperation areas in the region but also surprise with the territorial distribution of the funds received and projects' activities being performed.
The literature on cross-border cooperation carried out inland areas is rich in comparison to the one on maritime cross-border cooperation (Timothy and Saarinen 2013). Moreover, the tourism component in cross-border maritime cooperation is still in the initial phase of description in the literature (Ceric 2019), justifying the relevance of this paper.
The paper is the result of implementing the research project No. 2017/27/N/HS4/02773 financed by the National Science Center, Poland.
Mots clés : cross-border|tourism|cooperation|Interreg|Baltic Sea Region
A105134DC