Strategy goes borderless

Back in 2016, representatives of the regional administrations in Nova Gorica and Gorizia already started a joint process with the question of how they could establish long-term impulses with an ambitious cross-border project to strengthen the economic, social and cultural priorities of both towns and their surrounding areas.

It was asked how it would be possible for two towns to overcome the border and develop joint strategies for an entire border region. What role would network play around a major cross-border project like the Capital of Culture GO!2025? Where would the people involved come up against borders, and how would relationships be defined among the various protagonists? These questions were formed against the background of the regional embedding of GO!2025 in the area of tension around the border. In an interaction between my “field work” and scientifically documented knowledge, I searched for answers with the help of Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory.

Border connects and divides – regional development in the EU

Nova Gorica and Gorizia are connected but also separated by the border that marks the membership of a separate state, with one town, Gorizia, belonging to Italy and the other town of Nova Gorica located in Slovenian territory. Even before Slovenia’s admission into the European Union, the region around the two Gorizias/Goricas was suffused with regional initiatives that moved closer together across borders to launch joint economic, educational and cultural projects that strengthened the coexistence of society in the region. This rapprochement brought a new cultural understanding of each other, an exchange of consumer goods and an introduction to a different way of life that is visible today through various aspects like language, clothes, food, availability of education, and political attitudes. 

In his field theory, the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu describes that every society lives in a social space divided into individual fields (cf. Müller 2014: 74). This social space extends across the four main institutionalised complexes of the market, state, media, and church. The market, state, and media share the field of power, which is declared as the centre and the political and economic fields near it. The economic and political fields are decisive in determining the fate of modern societies, which is why material interests of the market, such as money and profit in the economy, and interests of the state via political capital in the form of gaining power can be negotiated openly and comprehensibly. In this process, the media take over the mediating function towards society and the social field (cf. Müller 2014: 88ff). This open negotiation of power is also evident in Slovenia’s accession to the EU in 2004. It was the time when new perspectives arose for the border region and the already existing initiatives, and thus cooperation could be redefined to strengthen the living and economic space. Above all, projects for cross-border regional development could be realised through the European Structural Funds and the Interreg Programme. The process of applying for the European Capital of Culture 2025 as a cross-border concept for the twin towns of Gorizia on the Italian side and Nova Gorica on the Slovenian side was set in motion and successfully achieved with the help of European funding.  Politics and administration created the framework conditions so that Nova Gorica, with a wide range of participants from both towns and the neighbouring region, could finally score in November 2020 with the broad-based development strategy of GO!2025 – GO BORDERLESS (GO!2025 for short). Along with Chemnitz, Nova Gorica was named the European Capital of Culture for 2025.

GO!2025 – On the necessity to overcome borders

GO!2025 aims to redefine the town and its territory across the border and the border itself as a space of interaction to develop the region as an economical and dynamic area of concentration in the long term, as the following excerpt from the bid book describes:

“Go!2025 is a stepping stone towards a cross-border conurbation, a green, vital, sustainable city, open to Europe and the world, dynamic and entrepreneurial-minded. A city to become and remain a pleasant, happy, creative environment for its citizens and a beacon of solidarity and collaboration across all kinds of borders.” (GO!2025 Team; 2020, S. 5)

With the participation of the two municipalities of Gorizia and Nova Gorica, project ideas were concretised and cast into a joint strategy concept for the application to become the European Capital of Culture. The regional cultural associations, tourism and agricultural cooperatives, business organisations and museum institutions, the universities, state cultural institutions and the Slovenian state railway company were all involved in the bid. The centre of the GO!2025 culture and art programme is Trg Europe / Piazza Transalpina, where a separate building, the so-called EPI Centre, will be erected directly on the border. The station building, built in “Art Nouveau Style”, will be redesigned and expanded. 13 Slovenian and 27 Italian municipalities are involved in the project and want to take advantage of the Pan-European application and promote regional development with the help of projects. Cultural and art events, a broad and newly adapted border museum, as well as the creation of infrastructure for leisure and sports activities along the border should thus enliven the entire region and be incorporated into the marketing strategy of GO!2025.

Through the examination of the history as well as the economic and demographic structure of this border area, which comprises a total of 40 municipalities, one inevitably encounters the topic of cross-border cooperation and the associated corresponding legal framework conditions that make living together and development in the border area possible at all[1].  These legal frameworks were defined at the European level during regional and cohesion policy to strengthen European economic, social and territorial cooperation by using different financing instruments (cf. Kołodziejski 2021).  The required legal basis for institutionalised cross-border governance has been created to manage cross-border political and strategic regional development in Europe in general. In the European context, this term refers to political control and collective governance by various state and non-state players such as public and private organisations, cross-border supra-regional players and cross-border institutions across different administrative levels and specifically across at least one national state border (cf. Ulrich & Scott 2021: 160f). In cross-border European regional policy, cross-border governance is defined in an institutionalist understanding and legitimised in establishing European groupings for territorial cooperation (EGTC). Through this separate legal personality, joint cross-border projects can be realised, knowledge can be exchanged, and coordination for regional spatial development can be improved.[2]  

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[1] Many social, economic and ecological problems can no longer be dealt with on a strictly national level but should be placed in a larger cross-border context and considered on a European or global level. These can be topics that deal with the cross-border expansion of mobility, health care, security, labour market policy, or environmental and nature protection with the aim of strengthening the living and economic space and thereby securing prosperity. This possibility of being able to finance cross-border projects through European funding programmes has created pressure on actors in the border regions to become active across borders. At the same time, the political, legal and financial support provided by the EU has created new development opportunities at the subnational level (see Ulrich & Scott, 2021: 159 f).

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/policy/cooperation/european-territorial/egtc

Cross-Border Governance – EGTC GO as a hub and platform for GO!2025

There is also an EGTC as an instrument for cross-border cooperation behind this border region.

In 2011, the municipalities of Gorizia, Nova Gorica and Šempeter-Vrtojba founded the EGTC GO as an independent and public legal cross-border organisation. This cross-border organisation facilitates the cooperation between authorities following their different legal national guidelines. The EGTC GO is seated in the Italian town of Gorizia. The tasks of the EGTC GO include developing and coordinating the pan-regional strategy to strengthen the competitiveness of the towns. Currently, the EGTC GO has set the following three main priorities for the next five years (see European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation, 2022):

1. “Capitalising the outcomes of two programming periods of the Italy-Slovenia cross-border cooperation in order to maximise the efficiency of public investments
2. reviving the former “border economy” by turning national borders, i.e. barriers, from a weakness into a strength, a series of opportunities for joint advancement of the local economy by relying on the peculiarities of the territory and for the benefit of the inhabitants of the two Member States;
3. upgrading local services for the inhabitants of the three municipalities by pooling the excellences of the entire area.”

The application for the European Capital of Culture GO!2025 is one of the projects which is associated with the priority setting in regional development. The EGTC GO not only plays a central role in the activities connected to the application but is also a hub in the management of cross-border projects, as well as an organisation that applies for projects and thus obtains funds from local, national and European funding programmes. The EGTC GO manages the territorial cooperation between the three towns independently of GO!2025. The EGTC GO is authorised to act directly at the European level to obtain funding, mainly through the cohesion funds and the cross-border funding programme “Interreg.”

 However, financing activities and projects through the EGTC GO also creates a dependency relationship between those involved in implementing projects. They need capital for this and receive it from the EGTC GO. On the other hand, the EGTC GO needs partners who realise projects and help develop the region long-term to legitimise itself.

The question is, how is the overall structure of participants working together across borders without being part of the European Capital of Culture project? Moreover, in general, who is responsible for the implementation of projects and who ultimately decides on the realisation of which projects and by whom?

Who owns the power?

The goal for successful cross-border regional development is the participation of the highest possible rate of contributors from the most diverse sectors who benefit from the development and implementation of cross-border projects. Cooperation in which decisions can be made democratically empowers all participants to claim and hold a share of power that is sufficient for them and, if possible, equal for all. However, the reality seems to be different. After all, during GO!2025 there are also winners and losers who will benefit financially from the European Capital of Culture 2025. In “Social World of Modern Society”, Bourdieu distinguishes a series of fields and subfields grouped around what he considers the three most important complexes: market, state and media. He proceeds from an implicit centre-periphery model, at the centre of which is the field of power. This field of power is the centre of a society struggling for meta-capital. Basically, if an idea wants to be realised, power must be conquered to enforce it. Economy, politics, market and state, in turn, are defined as the second line of conflict, which includes the bureaucratic field with its players and rules of the game.

Together with the legal field, the bureaucratic field is often referred to the field of governance because mainly state functionaries and civil servants act in this field. On the other hand, the purely political field is inherent to the operation of politics. The economic field includes the production of goods and services, while in the journalistic field, the communication and dissemination of information in a democratic society take place (see Müller 2014: 81f)

Figure 3 shows, based on the organisations and institutions involved in the GO!2025 project application, the complexity of cross-border cooperation in which funded projects are implemented and where the various fields in cross-border cooperation between Italy and Slovenia are anchored. It is easy to see that cross-border cooperation must always be negotiated in the political and bureaucratic fields. The field of cross-border cooperation requires administrative control that generally goes hand in hand with cross-border spatial planning to develop further. This open bureaucratic field is closely linked to the political field. This is because different national laws need to be reconciled and adopted by politicians. Therefore, the EGTC GO has an important function and role, even the most crucial, in the cross-border bureaucratic field. The political dimension in which an EGTC generally operates is also clearly visible. Due to the given structure, the scope for action always depends on the members, i.e., in the case of the EGTC GO in coordination with the representatives of the Slovenian municipalities of Šempeter-Vrtojba and Nova Gorica and the Italian municipality of

Gorizia, which of course represent their political mandates and interests. In the interaction between project development, in which participants from different fields and levels often have to be brought together, along with the implementation of a project, it is always necessary to coordinate the administrative level representing the political interests. In turn, this requires a high degree of diplomacy to harmonise the different interests between the political field, the economic field and the field of education/culture. This can be seen in the application procedure, where GO!2025 presents itself as a project that is intended to illustrate how two bordering towns, which both belong to different cultural circles as border towns of different nations and legal systems, can overcome not only the real territorial border but also borders in the minds.

In general, the role of power which EGTC GO plays due to its politically approved fields of competence at the regional level is powerful. It is up to the EGTC to steer regional development through the assessment of projects and to support those parties who are not only of economic but also of political benefit. This is confirmed by various statements concerning GO!2025 and the role of the EGTC GO.

“So, what G und NG already had before was this European Group of Territorial Cooperation EGTC – which already existed before even thinking about the capital thing, funding different projects from both sides.”

from the author’s interview with a representative of a cultural organisation, 2021

“European Capital of Culture is a project which is under the EGTC now. But now the project needs to go under a Slovenian institution, which will be a new association – owned by Nova Gorica Municipality.”

from the author’s interview with a representative of a cultural organisation, 2021

“Yes, but we also get the money from the EGTC. So, this is more a financial structure.”

from the author’s interview with a representative of a cultural organisation, 2021

Furthermore, according to individual conversations, all those involved know about the temporary nature of projects. Every project has an expiry date, but the EGTC GO will remain. The EGTC is the hub for European cross-border project financing, which makes it indispensable as an instrument of cross-border governance. The cross-border dimension of regional development will again receive new impetus through the GO!2025 application project. The EGTC acts as the project promoter and is responsible for the steering process, in which the bid book connected with the application turns out to be the final product. This form of steering is closely linked to the political field and is, in turn, related to the different political interests.

So, what are the different interests that can be found in the political field? What are the interests that are shown in the field of culture? Who has the honour, and who has the recognition? It is owed to the political decision that the two “Goricas” have integrated the surrounding area with 27 municipalities on the Italian side and 13 municipalities on the Slovenian side under the umbrella of the EGTC GO into the GO!2025 project. As one interview partner pointed out and as already sufficiently described, the concept of cross-border project cooperation is more than established even without GO!2025. However, those involved also openly expressed a lack of education and knowledge that the project aims to compensate for. Even though there is already cross-border cooperation in the form of projects, this joint action is not visible to society. The professionalism of project submissions and implementations should be increased so that more money can flow into the region and the Capital of Culture.

“There are already borderless collaborations that existed before. So, now we are just trying to make them more institutional and more visible, and we are trying to get them to a higher level of production, so we are not the ones that started the borderless life here, we are the ones that make it more visible and in bigger context.”

from the author’s interview with a representative of a cultural organisation, 2021

It was also due to the political decision that money would flow on both sides of the border. However, money does not flow for everyone. In addition, more power belongs to those organisations and institutions that have positioned themselves politically and publicly from the outset and are equipped with the knowledge of how to get this money to implement their projects and interests.

GO!2025 – the story of the art of distributing money equitably

GO!2025 – GO BORDERLESS was submitted as a project of the EGTC GO. To develop the implementation concept of GO!2025 – GO BORDERLESS, a separate project team was formed within the EGTC GO. The entire application process up to the award of the contract was conducted under the umbrella of the EGTC GO, in which the responsible project team was already carrying out the preparatory work for the application and planning, which would be continued in a separate organisation on the Slovenian side with responsibility for the operational implementation, to be able to access the funding reserved at the national level.  Legally, the organisation is owned by the city of Nova Gorica. This means that the financial structure of this organisation is also closely linked to the political control by the city and politics determine the structure. Unsurprisingly, this new structure of GO!2025, with a director and a total of three deputy directors, is already being critically examined. Even before the actual implementation of the project started, 1 million of the total available funds for one year had already been calculated for personnel costs, as one representative of an NGO critically remarked.

Nevertheless, based on the fact that more capital in terms of knowledge releases more economic capital in the form of funding, could this organisation be further developed to achieve an advantage on the Slovenian side in terms of attracting funding and sponsorship (the author’s thoughts)? On the Italian side, another representative from the cultural scene reported that the management at the administrative level of the city, which was responsible for the joint application, had already been replaced, and new staff had been appointed. Public representatives told me several times that there was a re-positioning and that this was politically motivated. In this case, it is on both sides because each twin town is now following its own interests. The result is that each town will use GO!2025 in the best possible way as a motor for raising European funding for regional development. However, this is also because the funding is limited for Interreg and the European Structural and Investment Funds per NUTS[1] region.

There are just about three years left to implement the European Capital of Culture 2025, during which projects defined in the Bid Book are to be implemented. GO!2025 is designed as a major regional development project. The conception of cross-border cooperation responsible for the successful application, including the strategy and presentation of the individual events and projects, took place in two phases and was anchored in the Bid Book. In addition to the surrounding municipalities, the regional art and culture scenes on both sides of the border were involved in the application process, including organisations and cultural institutions belonging to the public sector, such as the Border Museum or the Smugglers Museum, with regional companies and business representatives on both sides being included in the strategy development process.

The second round of the application process was accompanied by two calls in which internationally active and regional artists, cultural associations and local cultural workers from the region were invited to submit projects. All of them had to undergo a selection process to receive funding for realisation under the GO!2025 umbrella and to be advertised accordingly. However, not all projects were included in the Bid Book. The fact that this again created potential conflicts became apparent in the individual discussions. Those already listed would also receive the corresponding financial support, while all others would lose out, as one of those affected explained to us. The Bid Book gives legitimacy because it is important to be a visible part of the idea and to benefit from it as a participant. This is achieved symbolically by gaining a reputation as a player in the game of cross-border cooperation and materially by gaining access to funding for one’s own projects, which are firmly set in the Bid Book and are thus part of the European Capital of Culture GO!2025 – GO BORDERLESS project.

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[1] see NUTS:  www.europarl.europa.eu

Material, worldly fields versus symbolic fields in the social space of cross-border cooperation

Taking GO!2025 as an example, the symbolic field of culture is brought to the foreground in the social field of cross-border cooperation. In contrast to a worldly material field, the symbolic field, as a sacred field of cultural production, brings a work or product to the foreground. Work perfection is more important in the symbolic field than payment and remuneration (cf. Müller 2014: 85).  This allows projects to be implemented within the framework of GO!2025 that would otherwise not have been possible, or only to a very limited degree. Moreover, symbolic fields such as the field of culture, the field of art, the field of education and the intellectual field embody the immaterial and the religion of a society (cf. Müller 2014: 85). Those who become visible to themselves and the political field as participants gain an advantage in cross-border actions of unification at an institutionalised and project level by constantly positioning themselves through explaining their plans and cultivating relationships. Finally, chance plays a not insignificant role in the struggle for the title of European Capital of Culture 2025 because an interview partner who was actively involved in the application process for GO! 2025 told us why Nova Gorica was ultimately able to leave the competing cities of Ljubljana, Piran and Ptuj behind and win the bid:

“But then just there, the commission said, “Well, what are you going to tell about the borders? There are not borders anymore. You are in Schengen. So, what story you will tell?” Two weeks later, our government closed the square, so the Europe Square with a fence and suddenly all these things we were talking about came so true immediately. So, this commission suddenly found out, yes, there is a border still, even (if at) first, there was no fence, there was a fence here. And that fence the group for the candidature sees” (…) I think we were the only city of the candidates which was able to do projects last year, even (though) we had a border there. And so they saw that – let’s say – we are able to do (carry out) projects. All the other cities stopped because of Covid. Here they used the situation to let them see, how people were involved………. they were coming to the fence, they were exchanging things, they made a coloured book on the square itself – so kids coloured. – from both sides of the border. So, the commission saw that this border, this fence, it was there for three months, and, it served as a magnet for both sides. It was very visible the border between – it stays, it exists now. That is not gone.“

Legitimisation and positioning take place at the most diverse levels. Capital in the form of education is also drawn into position and legitimises itself, as expressed by a representative of a public institution:

“We are trying to help our NGOs when we see that there is a lack. (…) And by teaching them, we give this legacy that afterwards people learn to do it by themselves. Not always counting on us. Because we are more here to help and do our own project and not to work on the projects of other institutions and NGOs. So, a capacity building it’s called, and this is also one of the goals of European capital of Culture and that the legacy, of when we leave, the knowledge stays.”

Both statements express this so-called differentiation from others. Be it through the continued active doing and cross-border action despite Covid and therefore demonstrating that you can overcome borders even in times of crisis, or through a named advantage of knowledge about project applications or digital marketing and the associated expansion of borders regarding the relationship to other protagonists. Under the motto, “We know why things happen, and we know how to do it”, the participants remain in the game of power struggle, which places them in the direction of politics and donors. The state of a field depends on the strategies and practices of those involved. The amount of capital available in a field in interaction with the applicable rules of the game of institutions also determines the power of a field (cf. Müller, 2014: 79).

At the project level, projects are usually tightly calculated financially. Internally, there is a struggle with insufficient staffing and externally with legitimacy vis-à-vis administration and politics. This leads to a difficult and missing demarcation of one’s position and associated tasks. This was also shown in the interview with a representative who operates across borders and is financed in this way within the framework of a project. 

“… so it’s really a lot of work. The first problem is, we are too few people, which is always a problem for probably everywhere. So, we constantly have to select the priorities. You can’t do all (everything), even if you sometimes want to do it all… but…”

This “but” leaves a lot open and explains everything. What happens when protagonists do not live up to the expectations of those hierarchically higher and ultimately anchored in the political field? Cross-border cooperation depends strongly on political will. On the one hand, politics has the responsibility to reconcile at least two legal bases; on the other hand, to guide the process of different societies living together and to create incentives so that this cooperation becomes a positive force for development in a shared social field. These incentives are cast in form and combined into cross-border strategies, which can be found as projects in individual fields such as the economy, education, health, mobility, or culture. The decision on which projects are carried out in which field is made not only by those active in the field, such as regionally active organisations, but also by political bodies responsible for the public funds made available for this purpose via the administrative level in the bureaucratic field.

Overcoming imaginary borders – a CONCLUSION

GO!2025 is politically supported and approved at the national and European level, i.e., legitimised. According to the application documents, it is expected that those projects will be funded that are described in the Bid Book and fit into the sustainability strategy of GO!2025. A new structure has been set up under the auspices of the Nova Gorica municipality to raise funds from the European and national levels. In this way, the future European Capital of Culture has followed the guidelines and appointed a director for the next five years in March 2022 (European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation, GECT GO / EZTS GO, 2022). With this appointment, the balance of power among the EGTC member municipalities has also shifted, and it seems that this has given Nova Gorica more capital not only in the political field but also in the bureaucratic field. However, it is also interesting that another new appointment was announced in March 2022.  In the EGTC GO itself, the director position was also taken up by a woman (European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation, GECT GO / EZTS GO, 2022).

In autumn 2021, the regional protagonists and those already active beyond the borders were largely waiting because a whole year had already passed since Nova Gorica was named European Capital of Culture 2025. The major projects for 2025 were not yet visible, except in the Bid Book and for those directly entrusted with GO!2025 in the bureaucratic and political field. With the two new appointments to the key functions for the implementation of GO!2025, it can be hoped that a new spirit will bring new energy to the rather complex topic. With the new appointments, the cards in the bureaucratic field will be reshuffled on the relationship level. Trust is being rebuilt, and relationships are being renegotiated.  It is possible that regional players who previously saw themselves as being out of the loop will be given new opportunities and experience new involvement in the implementation phase.

Finally, about 20 million euros will flow into the European Capital of Culture and be administered by the newly installed public organisation GO!2025. With the implementation of those projects, which are intended to upgrade the railway station of Nova Gorica with the cross-border station square of Nova Gorica / Gorizia as a field of encounter in the longer term beyond the year 2025, not only economic impetus but also cultural and socio-political input will be provided. By removing the visible border and creating a common field where international artists can declare the living space along the border to be a work of art and consider it their own, they will enable a view of new perspectives and approaches. Furthermore, in this way, they can build a bridge to the respective other side and provide the opportunity to start a search for what they have in common.

Cross-border cooperation takes place with and without GO!2025. Only the visibility of this cooperation gives GO!2025 its justification as a forward-looking project, for GO!2025 embodies cross-border cooperation in a unique region, which allows the imaginary border between people to be overcome. It describes the living space that can develop further through the culturally determined potential of people with their different stories, since what remains is not the project as such. There are the traces that have been left behind. Traces from which living space continues to develop and in which something new emerges.

Bibliography

European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation . (2019). GO!2025 Nova Gorica : Gorizia / GO:BORDERLESS pre selection phase. Nova Gorica; Gorizia;: Nova Gorica, Gemeinde; Gorizia, Gemeinde; Acessed in March 2022

European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (2019). GECT GO / EZTS GO. Von http://euro-go.eu/en/: https://euro-go.eu/en/notizie-ed-eventi/news/chi-%C3%A8-kaja-%C5%A1irok-la-nuova-direttrice-del-zavod-go2025; Acessed in March 2022

GO!2025 Team, Vesna Humar; Neda Jusjan Bric; Lorenzo die Sabbata; Daniele Del Bianco; Simon Mokorel;. (2020). GO! BORDERLESS. Nova Gorica: Municipality of Nova Gorica and Municipality of Gorizia.

Kołodziejski, M. (09 2021). Kurzdarstellung über die europäische Union; Acessed on 30. 01 2022 von https://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/de/sheet/96/kohasionsfonds

Müller, H.-P. (2014, 2. Auflage). Pierre Bouridieu; Eine systematische Einführung. Berlin: eBook Suhrkamp Verlag.

Ulrich, P., & Scott, J. W. (2021). Cross-Border governance in europäischer Regionalkooperation. In D. Gerst, M. Klessmann, & H. Krämer, Grenzforschung, Handbuch für Wissenschaft und Studium. Baden-Baden, D: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG.