RECREATING THE LOCAL COMMUNITY — THE PROCESS OF RECONSTRUCTING POLISH-SLOVAK CROSS-BORDER RELATIONS AFTER 1989: THE CASE OF THE VILLAGES OF SROMOWCE NIŻNE AND ČERVENÝ KLÁŠTOR
RECREATING THE LOCAL COMMUNITY — THE PROCESS OF RECONSTRUCTING POLISH-SLOVAK CROSS-BORDER RELATIONS AFTER 1989: THE CASE OF THE VILLAGES OF SROMOWCE NIŻNE AND ČERVENÝ KLÁŠTOR

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to show the process of reconstructing institutional, and grass-roots, cross-border relations in the Pieniny area of the borderland between Poland and Slovakia after 1989. By virtue of a decision issued in 1920 by the Council of Ambassadors, an international border between Poland and Czechoslovakia was established. For over a hundred years the permeability of the border was regulated by political decisions and diplomatic relations between both countries. The border marked by the Dunajec River divided the community of Pieniny highlanders, creating a barrier which, in some periods, was completely impassable. The article is based on field research conducted in two villages called Sromowce Niżne and Červený Kláštor. The research was supplemented with a review of legacy data as well as one of institutional sources which documented the process of establishing formal cooperation between Poland and Slovakia at a local level (as part of Euroregion as well as The European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation TATR ). An analysis of the empirical material proved that the key moment that initiated the restoration of cross-border relations in the researched area of the Pieniny borderland after 1989 was the signing of the Declaration of the Territorial Self-Governments of the Republic of Poland and the Slovak Republic regarding the creation of the “Tatry” Region on 31 October 1993, and finally the signing of an Agreement between Polish and Slovak self-governments on establishing a cross-border association for the “Tatry” Euroregion at a Founding Congress in Nowy Targ on 26 August 1994. The culminating point of the Polish-Slovak rapprochement at the local level was the opening of a footbridge on the Dunajec River (12 August 2006), connecting the villages of Sromowce Niżne and Červený Kláštor, which enabled the reunification of both communities and the reconstruction of mature, neighbourly cross-border relations somewhat in isolation from the issue of the location of the actual border. One hundred years of Polish-Slovak cross-border relations can be pithily summed up in the following words: “a little bit of smuggling, a lot of poverty, but little politics”.

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