SHORT SUMMARY OF THE PROJECT
 
 

The town of Bojnice is the oldest and the best known centre of tourism in upper Nitra. Bojnice is well-known mainly by its beautiful castle, the biggest zoo park in the Slovak Republic and  its spa. With its historical and cultural potential it is one of the most interesting towns in Slovakia.

These all are features, which make the town interesting also from the point of view of cooperation with the towns from abroad.This time the intensive relationship is developed with the towns of Jeseník (CZ), from the year 1987, Bad Krozingen (DE) from the year 1993, and Rosta (IT) from the year 2003. The cooperation of the town of Bojnice and the mentioned twinning towns has a long tradition. Not only the representatives of the towns meet together, but the cooperation is also realized among  some institutions, social communities and in a lot of cases among individual inhabitants of the towns.

The important impulse to the development of the cooperation was the year 2004 in which the Slovak  Republic joined the nations in the European Union. The cooperation enabled inhabitants of our towns  to discuss the future in united Europe.
The current subject to which we concentrate the attention in our towns is the European Citizenship and
the European Constitution.One year after joining the European Union there is still police control on our borders and for our citizens there are still different restrictions in the countries which accepted us.

Our citizen is confused. On one side the ideals of a European Union citizen are declared, on the other  side one European citizen „is afraid“ of the other one. How is this status perceived by the inhabitants of our town and how is it perceived by our partner towns? Does it concern only political  representatives or is it also our duty to express what we think? If so, what are the possibilities of  a citizen of a particular town in a particular state?

The ideal space for a large exchange of ideas, for finding solutions and mutual support in the given questions can be found in this multilateral meeting, which we are preparing intensively. 

Our initiative raised positive reactions from our partners and verbally there is declared the interest of participation of a suggested spectrum of inhabitants from invited partner towns. 
In the composition of the delegations we prefer the participation of young people. Young people are  the potential of lasting and high quality of cooperation among our towns and generally also among  the nations of Europe. Very interesting is the fact that these partner towns represent considerable  variety of national cultures of European community. Conceptionally we suggested the program so that  the participants in different activities could in mutual discussion democraticly present their opinions, their culture, know other cultures and so find the answers to the questions of using local cultural,  historical, geographical and civil potential to form a citizen of a particular town as a citizen who fulfils the ideals of the European community within the motto „Unity in variety.“
All the activities of the official delegations are open to participation of the inhabitants of our town, as well as for the visitors of the town.
We hope that the participants of the meeting achieve the consensus in some questions concerning the European citizenship and they will help necessary and balanced acceptation of the rights of all inhabitants of the European Union. We are planning to summarize the results of the meeting in mutual declaration of the participants of the meeting which we want to present in the European  Parlament through the deputy of the European Parlament who will be invited to the meeting.
 

Ing. Ján Oberfranc

Brief description of the meeting, indicating also the European theme

Aims of the meeting

The aim of the meeting we are preparing is to find the answers to the question in mutual discussions in the large spectrum of the inhabitants from the participating twinning towns representing at the same time considerable variety of national cultures, to find possibilities to use local cultural, historical, geographical, and civil potential to form the citizen of a specific town as a citizen who fulfils the ideals of the European Union within the motto « Unity in variety. 
The achieved consensus of the participants of the meeting to the given questions about the European Citizenship will be summarized into a mutual declaration which we intend to present in the European  Parlament through the invited deputy of the European Parlament.

Tools, pedagogical methods used

Composition of the delegations

As the host town we will require the participating partner towns to make the composition of their delegations related to the activities given in the detailed schedule (which will be delivered to them)  so that the representative sample would be competent to take a stand on the given subject. From the  point of view of the age composition we will require minimum the half of the participants to be  to the age of 25.