Introduction

The basic negative effect of international borders on the societies lies with cutting off spatial continuity, breaking a free flow of information, commodities and individuals. Efforts to mitigate or eliminate this effect must be a normal reaction of people living on both sides of the borders.

Recent changes in political and economic regimes in the eastern part of Europe have led to the termination of the practice of centralized mechanism of ttal state control and made it possible to convert the character of multinational links among post-communist countries.

With the accession of several countries in Central and Eastern Europe to the European Union (CEE: Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) the issue of permeability of borders as a basic element of these links has been changed radically and has been shed a new light upon.

After 1945 the assignment of international border crossings were regulated by bilateral agreements between the socalled socialist countries standing on the same ideological platform in CEE as a macro-region. At that time these agreements reflected the political and foreign trade interests of socialist countries and expressed the following features:

- Only few border crossing points were open to international passenger and freight traffic.

- The volume of international freight traffic prevailed on the 2-3 most important crossings.

- Passenger traffic was regulated along each border section to a various extent.

- There were several administrative barriers for passengers (e.g. to travel to the Soviet Union) and the Iron Curtain held up their flow too (e.g from Hungary to Austria, from Czechoslovakia to Germany and Austria).

The above mechanism hindered the establishment of links both on mezo- and micro-regional levels or between the individual settlements for decades.

But with the time passing it became obvious that the major part of these problems could not be addressed properly and solved by governmental intervention or initiatives. Meanwhile, settlements of the borderzone regions needed different forms of international cooperation, especially under severe circumstances during the first years of emerging economies in the early 1990s.

A majority of these regions of CEE were already less-favoured areas in the socialist era and the general economic decline of the macro-region in the 90s has only strengthened their peripheral position.

Besides the political transition it became necessary to abolish the outdated mechanism of command economy applied on a regional scale. It was important for people living in border regions to recognize their common interest: to reduce and eventually to eliminate the dividing function of international borders, and to foster mutual cooperation among deprived regions and settlements along both sides of the borderline (Illés, I. 1996).