European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation TRITIA

In 2009, leaders of partner regions, with not very different structure of public administration in all Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, decided to bind on their previous bilateral cross-border co-operation and create a space for its further intensification and broadening into multilateral co-operation among four regions from three countries by the means of EGTC creation. All these regions are quite far from their national capitals and have historical links with their neighbors. All regions experienced economy restructuring, brain-drain and emergence of new industry branches, mainly the IT and automotive. 

With its size of 34069 km², principal cities of Katowice and Ostrava (both over 300 000 inhabitants) and 7 855 000 inhabitants, the intensified multiple cross-border co-operation in the region of future EGTC TRITIA has got an enormous potential to build on the complementarities of all partner regions and could  help to increase the attractiveness of all TRITIA founding regions, resulting into functional polycentric metropolitan region. With its strong business base, seven public universities and a high number of tertiary education providers TRITIA region constitutes also a space with considerable R&D and innovation potential. All four founding members also provide high number of opportunities for tourism, mostly in the local mountains.

The EGTC seat, registered according to the Polish law, will be in Cieszyn (Poland, Silesian Voivodeship) and its secretariat in Český Těšín (the Czech Republic, Moravian-Silesian Region). Twin-cities of Cieszyn and Český Těšín, positioned on the two banks of the Olza river, are well accessible from all parts of the EGTC. The EGTC director will be nominated by Žilina self-governing region (Slovakia). We expect that the secretariat starts functioning with three full-time employees plus seconded officials from all regions in 2012.