05/12/2014 ACROSSEE Final Conference in Vienna, Austria

The final conference of the ACROSSEE project (Accessibility improved at border CROSsings for the integration of South East Europe) took place in Vienna on 5th December 2014. The event aimed at disseminating the main projects results and involving key stakeholders on the future perspectives of transport in the South East Europe Area for the next programming period 2014-2020. The first session of the final conference was devoted to the presentation of some of the main findings and accomplishments of the ACROSSEE project. Then, the Central European Initiative illustrated the elaborated transport model that analyses in detail the South East Europe multimodal transport network, thus allowing to assess criticalities along with untapped potentials. In particular, apart from reproducing the current situation, it includes different scenario evaluations referred both to the 2020 and the 2030 time horizons. Furthermore, AustriaTech presented the Data Management Centre, a web-based platform to facilitate and ease the exchange of the ACROSSEE project results and other (cross border) transport related (meta-) data in South East Europe. The main objective of the prototype was to demonstrate the benefits and challenges of such a central access point. The platform is accessible via the URL: www.transportmodelling.eu. Finally, the results of the analysis on the border crossing points was outlined, as well as the preliminary recommendations for the harmonization of customs procedures. The second session was devoted to a panel discussion among some key stakeholders. There was general consensus over the acknowledgement that administrative measures are far more efficient than infrastructural ones: “Improving infrastructure (expensive!) saves minutes; improving border crossing (low investments) hours!”. For more information, please visit the project’s official web site at: www.acrossee.net. The LP thanked all the PPs for the contributions over the months of the project duration and stressed the positive feedbacks from the Final conference held in the morning. Most importantly, there seems to be general consensus over the need to proceed with projects focused on improving BCPs both in the Danube and Adriatic-Ionian Programmes, as underlined by Mr. Žepič (coordinator of the Connectivity pillar in the EUSDR), Mr. Zimmer (UNECE) and Mr. Begovic (SEETO). Finally, a brief roundtable with general considerations about the project implementation followed, taking into account strengths and weaknesses of ACROSSEE, in order to learn for improving future project cooperations. For more information, please visit the project’s official web site at: www.acrossee.net.