Twinning

Narva together with the Russian twin-town Ivangorod, as well as 4 more town pairs located on the external state borders of Russia, Finland, Sweden, Germany and Poland, has since 2004 participated in the international project "City-twins Co-Operation Network". Recently the participating towns have initiated the dialogue on establishing an association of European border towns.

One of the main goals is to better represent themselves on the European level.

The overall objective of the project is to foster local development by promoting cooperation between different border towns, by introducing and disseminating best practices and action models in different sectors of local administration, e.g. welfare and health care, local economy and business, labour force, education, culture, etc.

The partner cities have clarified the best practices and action models in border areas and developed a permanent communication and cooperation system between themselves. The idea is to transfer best practices from one town pair to another and thus improve the local and regional administration in all partner cities.

New initiatives concern first of all cooperation with Russia. The most important of them is how to make border crossing as smooth as possible not only for passengers but also for goods. Cooperation with Russian partners is focused on strategic development and promotion of entrepreneurship. During the project long-term strategic plans between Imatra (FIN) - Svetogorsk (RUS) and Narva (EST) - Ivangorod (RUS) will be elaborated. The project also focuses on spatial planning and exchange of experts between partners. One important result of the project will be an association of the European border towns. The main task of the association will be to look after the interests of the border towns. It will promote the exchange of experiences, ideas and opinions of frontier towns, develop and coordinate international projects, promote multicultural aspects and encourage youth and culture exchanges. The association will arrange one international meeting every year where the issues linked with border regions will be discussed.

The establishment will take place at the final conference of the project, which will be held in Imatra on 12-13 December 2006.

The cooperation of projects partners will continue within the new association. Other border towns are welcome to join the new association.