May 30, 2022

EU projects at the tri-border area Saxony, Poland and the Czech Republic

Markt Zittau mit Container und einer Gruppe von Jugendlichen

This morning in May 2022, the EU flag flies high above the town hall tower of Zittau. On the marketplace, three shipping containers, rebuilt into "Mobile Innovation Laboratories", have landed for a week as part of the EU project TRAILS.

The flagship project TRAILS (Travelling Innovation Labs and Service) and the following project TRAILS+ are supported by the TU Dresden with funds from the European Union (European Regional Development Fund, Interreg Poland-Saxony). The Laboratory of knowledge architecture has created an offer together with the Polish project partners, the Marshal's Office of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship and Wrocławska University of Science and Technology with a pilot character. The new apprenticeship format plans theoretical and practical innovation and start-up trainings, connecting educational institutions, local employers as well as multipliers: border-crossing.

The mobile innovation labs are usually placed at Saxon or Polish schools with this offer. The CrossBorderEvents - joint workshops for Polish and German students - shine bright in the project events. On this spring day, three school classes from Zittau, Görlitz and Bogatynia traveled to such a CrossBorderEvent to extend their knowledge with the support of interpreters.

The babble of voices of German, English and Polish between the students, the teachers, the two TRAILS trainers and project partners during the breaks also shows the cross-border normality that wants to become everyday life in the tri-border region.

A few steps away – also on Zittau Market – is the International Institute (IHI) Zittau, which was founded as a model of joint, cross-border learning by partner universities in Saxony, Poland and Czech Republic in 1993. Since 2013, the IHI has been a central unit of TU Dresden and it plays an important role for projects with partners from Central Europe.

TRAILS is exemplary for the many projects of the TU Dresden in the Polish-Saxon-Czech interconnected region. The previous results of the INTERREG Poland-Saxony projects are impressive: Between August 2016 and December 2018, TRAILS trained 2,088 participants in 127 workshops in nearly 30 municipalities in Eastern Saxony and Lower Silesia. The follow-up project TRAILS+ (launched in April 2019) has reached 1,645 participants in 104 workshops to build and deepen innovation skills at 19 locations in the border region.

Further information about this and other projects with participation of the TUD at the tri-border Saxony, Poland and the Czech Republic, especially about the INTERREG Poland-Saxony projects, can be found on the website Interreg PLSN as well as in the journal POLONUS.

The EPC is pleased to continuing to provide comprehensive and professional advice to TU Dresden researches on all INTERREG funding opportunities in the 2021 - 2027 funding period.