Twinning and cross-border cooperation in the
Hungary-Romania border region
by Zoltán Pámer
The article examines twinning and cross-border cooperation in the Hungary–Romania border region, showing how traditional town-twinning evolved alongside euroregions, EGTCs, and Interreg programmes. Its main finding is that existing twinning relations often support project-based cooperation, especially around major cities and nearby border municipalities.
The context is a long and changing borderland shaped by historical shifts and showed different stages of activity. After World War II the border had become a de facto closed one, which has been opened in 1989, resulting intensive interactions and economic cooperation. The study places this within a broader European history of municipal cooperation, while stressing that the Hungary–Romania border has both ethnic and thematic cooperation dimensions.
The research asks three questions:
- what territorial patterns twinning follows along the border,
- how twinning relates to project-based cooperation in the 2014–2020 period,
- and which twin partnerships were successful at project level.
To answer these, the author combined two quantitative databases: the twinning database of the National Association of Local Governments of Hungary from 2018 for the four bordering countries of Hungary and the project-level database of the Interreg V-A Romania-Hungary 2014-2020 programme. These were complemented them with semi-structured interviews.
The quantitative results show a clear spatial logic: municipalities closer to the border were more likely to have partners across it, and the strongest county-level links were between neighboring areas such as Hajdú-Bihar–Bihor, Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg–Satu Mare, and Csongrád-Csanád–Timiș. Besides the directly bordering regions, the Szekler Transylvania counties also play a key role in twinning with Hungarian municipalities. Most of the 261 twinning partnerships did not generate projects, but a smaller set of connections, especially Debrecen–Oradea, Szeged–Timișoara, Nyíregyháza–Satu Mare, and Berettyóújfalu–Marghita, produced multiple projects and stood out as the most active. While in the smaller settlements the local governments and local NGOs are the most active, in the county seats regional and national institutions, universities dominate the cooperation.
The conclusions are that twinning and project cooperation reinforce one another, but a formal twinning agreement alone does not automatically become operational cooperation. The most durable links combine proximity, similarity of settlement type, and the involvement of major cities and institutions, which makes them especially important for sustainable border-region cooperation.
Publication:
Pámer, Zoltán: Twinning and Cross-Border Cooperation in the Hungary-Romania Border Region
Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management, Volume 21, Issue 2, pp.86–99 / May 2026
