Thursday, 13 November 2025
The City of Bratislava and the Austrian regions of Lower Austria and Burgenland have formally launched a permanent cross-border working community, building on more than a decade of cooperation in the Bratislava urban region. The first meeting of the new political body took place in the Slovak capital today, marking the official start of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft baum_cityregion as a long-term institutional platform.
The working community brings together elected representatives and administrative partners from the three regions to coordinate planning, mobility, spatial development and cross-border projects within the functional Bratislava region. The new structure replaces earlier project-based collaboration and aims to deliver more stable and efficient long-term governance.
The political representatives attending the inaugural session included Bratislava Deputy Mayor Jakub Mrva, President of the Lower Austrian Regional Parliament Karl Wilfing, and Burgenland Regional Councillor Heinrich Dorner, with the meeting also supported by the Austrian Ambassador to Slovakia Johannes Wimmer.
Officials from both Austrian regions highlighted the increasing interdependence of the three territories. Lower Austria underscored the importance of formal coordination mechanisms, noting that the regions already cooperate on topics such as the cross-border commuter flows and public transport links, including the jointly financed bus line connecting Hainburg an der Donau with Bratislava. Burgenland pointed to the rapid population growth in municipalities like Kittsee and the urban development zones near the Slovak border as key reasons for strengthening bilateral and trilateral communication.
Bratislava confirmed that the city intends to deepen its collaboration with the Austrian partners and expand the platform to include Hungary’s Győr-Moson-Sopron county as an observer. The Austrian side endorsed the move, recognising the need for coordinated planning across all parts of the wider Bratislava region.
The new baum_cityregion framework focuses on four core thematic areas: culture and tourism; nature and climate protection; spatial development and community issues; and cross-border mobility. The territorial scope covers Bratislava and the neighbouring Austrian districts of Gänserndorf, Bruck an der Leitha and Neusiedl am See.
The working community will operate through three bodies: a political bureau responsible for strategic direction; a steering committee composed of administrative representatives; and a coordination office based in Bratislava, run jointly by NÖ.Regional, Regionalmanagement Burgenland and the city’s Department of Urban Strategies and Analyses. The structure is financially supported by Lower Austria, Burgenland and the City of Bratislava.
The institutionalisation of baum_cityregion follows more than 15 years of growing cooperation, beginning with early cross-border initiatives in the 2000s and continuing through a series of EU-funded “Bratislava-Umland” projects implemented between 2011 and 2022. The creation of a permanent working community is intended to consolidate this experience into a stable long-term platform capable of supporting joint projects, improving information exchange and addressing development pressures in Central Europe’s most interconnected cross-border metropolitan area.
