Civic dialogue
Countless city twinning programmes link Germany and Poland. At a conference in Berlin more than 400 guests from both countries acknowledged this cooperation.
Cooperation often starts at the micro-level, for example in towns and cities. At present there are more than 430 partnerships between places in Germany and Poland. For example, there are close links between Nuremberg and Łódź. There are lots of exchange visits, with the inhabitants discussing their joint future, the art and music colleges collaborate, and there is lively interaction as regards the challenges of urban planning and energy. The twinning of the two cities has been in place since 1988, meaning it is older than the German-Polish Treaty of Good Neighbourship and Friendly Cooperation – 2016 saw the 25th anniversary of its signature
Contact brokered between some 2.7 million young people
The participants at the German-Polish Municipality Partnership Conference on 16 November in Berlin also praised the great value of the cooperation at the municipal level. The convention was organized by the German Federal Foreign Office together with the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR) and marks one of the high points of the jubilee year. Minister of State for Europe at the Federal Foreign Office, Michael Roth, the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland, Andrzej Przyłębski, and the President of the German CEMR section, Georg Huber, opened the conference with its some 400 participants.
Youth exchanges play a key role in the town twinning programme and in German-Polish dialogue per se. Germany therefore recently resolved to increase its contribution to the Deutsch-Polnisches Jugendwerk from five to six million euros a year. This Potsdam and Warsaw-based exchange organization has succeeded since 1991 in bringing together some 2.7 million young people from the two countries.
