Twinning Towns and Cities across Europe
By Jonathon Brown
You might say that the instinct to twin towns and cities is intricately entwined with the idea of war... The earliest examples are, after all, the treaties between city-states designed to protect each other's interests in times of hostilities. The Romans were particularly effective at such politics and the tradition continued into the Renaissance, with alliances between Milan and Verona against Florence and Naples to oppose the Emperor Henry VII. And as we take the train from Pisa to Florence we cross between two eternally rival states, once in war, now in football.
Now, yes, it is the other way round: the great expansion of twinning arrangements has its most recent origins in the hope never to repeat the destructiveness of the second World War. Perhaps an impetus was supplied by the unprecedented involvement of the citizenry in warfare, under the bombings of major cities, but whatever the case it was soon after 1945 that the first twinnings took place. Indeed, Vancouver had already in 1944 established such a relationship of solidarity with Odessa, but it was in peacetime that such links could really flourish and in Europe that the greatest enthusiasm was first expressed for such links. In 1947 Bristol, for instance, send 'leading citizens' to Hanover and Edinburgh signed a twinning agreement with Nice. Understandably with less urgency than in war-torn Europe, it was President Eisenhower who instituted the so-called Sister City programme in the United States of America in the mid-1950s, a scheme which ten years later became fully international.
Edinburgh has an interesting history in this context. At the time of the Enlightenment, in the middle to late eighteenth century, Edinburgh became known as 'The Athens of the North', for its vision, architecture and intellectual life - while Prague was known as the Edinburgh of the East! These were in no way formal arrangements, but they do signal that a sense of community across wide distances is not a recent phenomenon. And at the same time as that first twinning with Nice, Edinburh was to establish its annual arts festival to provide an international meeting point for creative spirits from across Europe and the world. On the other hand, some years ago, at a time when the political administrations of Edinburgh and Nice were at the opposite extremes of the spectrum, the twinning tended to lie dormant.
The choice of twin may be based on all sorts of factors, geographical or industrial for instance, growing from long-standing traditions rooted in the past or recent haphazard encounters of like artistic spirits; other links have also been prompted by political sentiments of solidarity, such as with Poland in the 1970s, and more recently with China and Cuba. Some pairings are a perfest and neat fit: for instance, Monza (Italy), with its great cambered racing track is twinned with... why, Indianapolis, of course! The old university town of Leiden in The Netherlands is twinned with Oxford while Cambridge is twinned with Heidelberg; Porto, in Portugal, where the port comes from, is twinned with Bristol, in England, where the port goes... As for Beaune, lost in vineyards, linked with Hitchen in the heartland of London's commuter belt - I leave historians to investigate that!
Recent EU expansion brings new challenges: cities from different countries within Western Europe have thus for long established closer cooperation, but now it is for cities and towns once part of countries lying across the Iron Curtain to reach out. An imaginative example comes with Vienna (Austria) and Bratislava (Slovakia) - now unofficially called "Twin City Vienna-Bratislava". These great centres were once a mere tram-ride away. Their new re-integration is taking shape and with a population of almost 5 million (9 million if you include surrounding regions within 2 hours by car or train), this new urban area may be one of the largest in Central Europe.
Vienna has a thriving high-tech biotechnology industry while Bratislava has attracted many car manufacturers. Moreover, the location of this new "Twin City" is ideal for developing European as well as Euroasian projects. Two international aeroports that once served mainly domestic customers are increasingly evolving to be regional hubs serving tens of millions from all over Central and Southeast Europe and given its good location on some of European busiest rivers, the new Twin has the best of opportunities to become, once again, as it was 100 years ago, a focus of Central European economic life.
The links do not have to be that dramatic, however; nor the towns so grand. An exchange of some youngsters between schools may have less fanfare than swapping blockbuster arts exhibitions, but it will sow just as rich a seed in the imaginations of the children. A fishing port on the coast of Scotland may be twinned with a small village in the Italian Lakes, but the exchange is as inspirational and welcome as any.
Not surprisingly, the European Union takes care to do its part to administer, encourage, finance and propagate these important ties. The year 1989 saw the establishment of a support scheme and by 2003 well over 10 million €uros were allocated to about 1,300 projects. In 2003 ten outstanding initiatives involving 27 towns received Golden Stars awards at an award ceremony in the Charlemagne building of the European Commission. "Town twinning is an excellent example of what citizens can do at a local level to contribute to the greater integration of Europe. It is by sharing our different experiences that we grow richer both culturally and socially," said Ján Figel', European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Multilingualism, a perfect summation of exactly the ambitions that inspired the very first formal arrangements sixty years ago.
All town-twinning projects are now managed by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency and you can make direct contact with the Agency at :
EACE Agency, Unit P7 Citizenship
BOUR 135-139
1049 BRUSSELS
fax : ++ 32 (0)2.296.23.89
telephone: ++ 32 (0)2. 299.11.11.
The web page for the European Union's twinning programmes is at:
http://ec.europa.eu/towntwinning/index_en.html
© Jonathon Brown. All views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to the European Commission.