The paper is concerned with the spatial dimension of the coronavirus crisis and the tensions it created in multilevel governance in the Polish–German border region. Regarding the spatial dimension of the crisis, territoriality is referred to as the political competence to exert control over a national territory and over places particularly affected by the coronavirus crisis and its management – from local hubs of outbreaks to twin cities in border regions facing closed borders. Territoriality was mirrored in the unilateral decisions of the central governments to close national borders in Europe. Considering spatiality as well as the asymmetric multilevel setting of cross-border Polish–German relations, this paper investigates to what extent subnational actors were able to interact in a cross-border sense in this situation. The paper shows the relevance of subnational political authorities and highlights the significance of civil society actors in times of crisis, as they were able to lobby for a less restrictive border management response and helped to hold – merely through digital activities – the web of bilateral relations together. In this light, it may enhance the ability of further research to take a multilevel territorial perspective for a more nuanced picture of the pandemic's effects.

It is certain that the transnational coronavirus crisis challenged our common understanding of a borderless Europe – at least for EU citizens. What would normally be unconditionally prevented as a scenario of right-wing populist politics became, in spring 2020, a means of fighting the pandemic throughout Europe: the closing or strict control of national borders (Cyrus and Ulrich 2020; Klatt 2020).

Studies in human geography dealing with the effects of the pandemic confirm that spatiality has become a central marker of the pandemic (Klatt 2020). Certain places, accordingly, have played a pivotal role in spreading the virus (Brinks and Ibert 2020) – from regions popular for winter sports to particular milieus of social inequality or, as the mass infections of meat industry workers have illustrated, to precarious locations of economic and sociocultural exploitation (Nack 2020).

Spatiality also comes into play in regard to a second observation, namely, that the nation-state held most of the power in dealing with the crisis and challenged multilevel governance settings (Humer 2020; Klatt 2020). A crucial example was the mentioned decisions of European state governments to close national borders to ban the spread of the coronavirus. The ‘re-bordering of Europe’ affected border regions in a particular way (Jańczak 2020) and created tensions in the relationships of the state and subnational actors involved in cross-border relations (Klatt 2020).

Given the inherent conflict between national crisis management with its territorial manifestation (Brinks and Ibert 2020) and transnational multilevel governance arrangements, the paper investigates to what extent subnational actors during the lockdown in spring 2020 were able to interact in the Polish–German border region, a historically sensitive region in which free movement has existed only since 2007 and where the very lockdown has highlighted the real transnational entanglements. The concept of multilevel governance (Piattoni 2009; Marks et al.forthcoming) serves here merely as a heuristic tool to describe how subnational administration and civil society actors tried to cope with this unpreceded situation of closed borders.

The first section introduces the conceptual understanding of spatiality and its linkage to the concept of multilevel governance and justifies the selection of the Polish-German border-region as case under investigation. Section two provides a contextual description of the Polish–German ‘entangled area’. The main part shows examples of state-level, subnational state and civil society activities, which reveal, as the final section concludes, that territoriality affected but did not fully jeopardize cross-border multilevel governance.

Following Brinks and Ibert, similar to other crises, the corona pandemic was able to ‘unfold complex, multi-local geographies’. Relevant subcategories of that spatial dimension are territoriality and place, which also seem appropriate for this study. Territoriality is understood as ‘political competence exercised by states to exert control on a national territory’. Place refers to spots where the effects of a crisis materialize (Brinks and Ibert 2020: 280).

Such a conceptual understanding coincides with recent studies that emphasize the power of the state (Humer 2020), the statés national sovereignty within the EU (Lang and Odarza 2020), or even a ‘renaissance of the executive’ during coronavirus crisis management (Klatt 2020). From that perspective, territoriality was mirrored in the unilateral decisions of the central governments to close their national borders. Such a decision may stand in conflict with the multilevel territorial structure of governance that has been developing over the last seven decades, a process by which authority has been dispersed from central governments to regional and local governments (Marks et al.forthcoming) with civil society actors involved as relevant partners. At least the crisis management in the Danish–German border region faced ‘a return of the state as single actor, replacing practices of cross-border multi-level governance’ (Klatt 2020).

Multilevel governance, here merely used as a heuristic tool to analyse transnational interactions from national and subnational state and non-state actors, depends on whether a state has a unitary or federal structure (Marks et al.forthcoming). In Germany, federal governments often made their own decisions on crisis regulations (e.g. wearing masks in the respective territory). However, given the exceptional situation of the lockdown with the state decision to close national borders and its particular territorial effects on border regions, the theoretical question arises as to what extent territoriality jeopardized multilevel governance; or more specifically, to what extent subnational state and non-state actors were able to act and interact in a cross-border sense in this situation. The Polish–German border region is selected as a case that is particularly sensitive for politics with spatial effects (Klomp 2019) because cross-border multi-level governance occurs within a setting of multiple asymmetries: Structural asymmetries between federal Germany and more centralized Poland, political asymmetries between the German centre-left governmental coalition and the Polish government led by the right-wing nationalist Law-and-Justice party, historical asymmetries given the German World-War II atrocities against the Polish population and socioeconomic cross-border disparities (Jańczak 2018, 2020). Little comprehensive data about the voluntary interactions before the lockdown exist (Hennig 2020) and the situation is still ongoing. The study, thus, is limited to an explorative investigation of the guiding question. Main rational for selecting blogs, newspapers, and some internal information through contacts to responsible actors in the administration of Brandenburg was to trace the chronology of those relevant events, which displayed exemplary national and transnational multi-level interactions in the border-region. The end of analysis is marked by the date of re-opening the border in mid-June 2020.

Elements of Polish–German cross-border multilevel governance

Bilateral relations in border regions are multilevel structures par excellence, from binational consultations and diplomacy to subnational bilateral partnerships between regions, communes or cities to local youth exchange programmes or joint civil society projects (Chilla et al.2012). A relevant state-level structure of bilateral relations with a regional focus are the coordinators for – here – German–Polish relations (Auswärtiges Amt 2020). A difference in multilevel governance between Poland and Germany marks the greater scope of autonomy that the Bundesländer, as subnational units, have compared with the voivodships in more centralized Poland. Both, however, can install interregional partnerships, which over the years have established a stable web of subnational cross-border agreements and regional governmental or societal contacts (Scott 2017; MdFE 2020).

Cooperation has become firmly entrenched, especially in the twin cities Frankfurt/Oder-Słubice, Guben-Gubin and Görlitz-Zgorczelec. To a large extent, this is due to the regional EU funding structure of INTERREG A in the Euroregions, which was implemented to foster the regional economy, a joint regional identity and the convergence of living conditions (Opiłowska 2017). The federal Polish and German governments of the Bundesländer Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg and Saxonia and Vojewodships Western Pomerania, Lubuskie and Lower Silesia form part of these Euroregions. Federal policy experts are constantly in contact to develop guidelines, key topics and funding policies (MdFE 2020). Moreover, local nonprofessional civil society actors, once relevant for reconciliation and conflict solution (Boehnke et al.2015; Opiłowska 2017), make use of these funding options. Pivotal roles for cross-border societal activities are also played by the state cosponsored but politically independent Foundation for German–Polish Cooperation, the German–Polish Science Foundation and the German–Polish Office for Youth Exchange (Hennig 2020).

Between Germany and Poland, cross-border normality has been in place since 2007, when Poland joined the Schengen area. Despite the historical legacy of the Oder-Neisse frontier as a classic example of post-World War II order and forced displacement, as Germans were replaced mainly with Polish citizens resettled from Poland's pre-war eastern provinces that were ceded to the Soviet Union (Halicka 2013), normal life developed successfully in the border region (Kurnicki and Sternberg 2016).

In 2018, a German–Polish government commission adopted a joint forward-looking strategy, which was a vision showing what the area on both sides of the Oder and the Lusatian Neisse should look like in 2030 (German–Polish Spatial Planning Committee 2018). The core element of that ‘Joint Future Concept 2030’ is the German–Polish entangled area (Verflechtungsraum) as a visionary alternative to border area semantics: cross-border infrastructures (e.g. public transport, rail, energy, health care) between the metropoles of Szczecin and Berlin strengthen urban subcentres on both sides of the Oder and the Neisse. By designating Oder as the river of a common region in the middle of Europe, the border region would also be able to shed its reputation as a peripheral location in Europe (MdFE 2020).

The ‘entangled area’, however, is still marked by socioeconomic asymmetries, especially between the wealthier yet still peripheral German region of eastern Brandenburg and the economically weaker Voiwodship Lebuskie. Shopping tourists from Germany keep the local cross-border economy running (Jańczak 2018). Another asymmetry concern diverging political orientations – contrary to the profile of the respective national governments –, with average support for the right-wing AfD of 25% in the Brandenburg border region, while the neighbouring Western Polish region traditionally supports the Polish liberal opposition (Statista 2020).

In the northern part of Brandenburg and the southern part of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, however, nearly every tenth citizen is of Polish origin, while bilingual kindergartens and schools can be found as in the three twin cities of Frankfurt/Oder-Słubice, Guben-Gubin and Görlitz-Zgorczelec (Adam 2020). Under normal conditions, approximately 200,000 Polish workers commute to Germany. However, an increasing number of Germans are choosing to live on the Polish side of the border (SZ/dpa 2020).

A contrasting reality came to characterize the new border situation in mid-March 2020, eleven days after the Polish ‘patient zero’, living near Słubice, returned from a family visit across the western border. A week before, the Polish government had already decided to take drastic measures to limit the number of infections (Jańczak 2020).

On 15 March, after declaring the possible risk of an epidemic outbreak, the Polish government closed the approximately 460 km long border to normal traffic and installed border controls – the movement of goods continued, albeit slowly. Approximately 50 village communities and seven cities, three of them twin cities, were divided (Opielka 2020). Here, where bridges connect the respective local urban centres of the regions on either side of the river, lockdown-divided families stopped commuting and shut down the local border economy. Three weeks later, border crossings were banned, and a 14-day quarantine for returnees and commuters was introduced (Jańczak 2020). Until April 2020, pictures of kilometre-long traffic jams, and overnight, truck drivers were broadcast on national media outlets in both countries. This new hard border not only had an immediate and apparent effect on ordinary people's freedom of movement, the shutdown of the local cross-border economy and labour relations also implied financial losses and the danger of job losses, especially for those who were dependent on service requests from Germany (Opielka 2020).

National level

Polish–German relations on the national level have always been a delicate issue. Migration control, the dismantling of the state of law by the illiberal Polish Law and Justice (PiS) government, or debates on the legacy of German aggression against Poland during WWII challenged bilateral diplomacy and foreign policy (Hennig 2020).

During the recent crisis management, on the national level, these relations were merely marked by unilateralism and a lack of structured communication.1 Both, the German and the Polish responses to the pandemic included border closures with a national frame of reference; with more restrictive measures on the Polish side. At that point, the position of the coordinator for German–Polish relations helped to compensate for missing governmental consultations to a certain extent (Handelsblatt 2020). In his position, the prime minister of Brandenburg was able to establish a direct line to the new Poland–Germany coordinator from the end of April onwards. It remains to be seen whether a joint institution for better coordination, as the German minister suggested on the occasion of the opening of the border on 13 June 2020, will come into existence (SZ/dpa 2020).

Subnational level

The pandemic especially revealed the importance of the Polish specialist doctors and nurses who make up to 40% of the total staff in hospitals near the Oder on the German side of the border. To cope with the difficult situation, the state governments of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Brandenburg and Saxony offered overnight flat rates in hotels for Polish commuters (Ärzteblatt 2020).

Despite the stable web of cross-border contact between regional political administrations and the exchange of encouraging formal letters between the Polish and the German heads of the federal states and voivodeships, communication slowed noticeably. Moreover, the intention of the German federal governments of Brandenburg, Saxony and Mecklenburg to set up a regional communication network for rapid exchange of information on the crisis situation with their Polish partner voivodeships was difficult to realize.2 The centralism of the PiS government had already reduced the room of manoeuvre of subnational units for cooperation at the regional political level in relevant infrastructure projects before the pandemic (Hennig 2020).

In this light, the Polish–German celebration to commemorate the end of the Second World War on 8 May 1945 this year in the twin city Görlitz/Zgorzelec (Saxonia/Lower Silesia) was a special cross-border event during the coronavirus outbreak. The mayors of both cities, as well the prime minister of the Free State of Saxony and the marshal of the Lower Silesia Voivodeship, met on the Old Town Bridge. Together with political representatives and key church figures, they set up a sign of German–Polish friendship. A border fence erected in response to the coronavirus pandemic separated the German and Polish participants. All those present wore masks and placed 75 white and 75 red roses in memory of the victims on the fence (City of Görlitz 2020).

The significance of long-term bilateral local connections in a time of crisis was also revealed by the talks that took place between the partner cities of Berlin and Warsaw and in the case of Dresden, which supported Lower Silesia in examining Polish coronavirus tests from Wrocław (Datan-Grajewski 2020).

Direct contacts between the twin cities, however, slowed down. On 13 June 2020, when border controls were abolished following an agreement at the state level on 11 June, a photo was broadcast of two men enthusiastically rushing to hug on the city bridge connecting Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice. These men were the mayors of both cities, emotionally overcome by the chance to meet again, while violating the central social distancing rules (ZDFheute 2020).

Subnational non-state actors

Subnational non-state actors here refers to the realm of civil society as ‘a space of social self-organization between state, market, and private sphere, a locale of clubs, circles, networks, and NGOs that offer a place for public discussion, conflict, and communication, a space for efforts in the interest of common welfare’ (Kocka 2004: 68–69). In this vein, the section starts with examples of civic engagement at the local level within the entangled area against the strict border policy that began in April 2020.

Local protesters

‘Let us work, let us go home’ – beginning on 24 April, Poles and Germans, often organized on either side of the twin cities, started to protest against the strict quarantine rules for all commuters along the Oder and Neisse rivers. Organizers were small local networks of people and NGOs that have been active in cross-border activities for decades (Mdr 2020). They channelled grievances from separated families, health workers, Polish pupils attending German schools or people in need of specialist medical treatment. Their voices were supported by the local political leaders of the German Bundesländer and the Vojevodships, who successfully petitioned the Polish government (Jańczak 2020): On 4 May, Warsaw finally allowed many commuters, with the exception of medical staff, to travel back and forth without having to undertake a 14-day quarantine (NDR 1 Radio MV 2020). Protests continued until 17 May, when the Polish government also abolished quarantine regulations for medical staff (Ärzteblatt 2020). The following quote from a local activist shows exemplary that a small social movement had formed that not only fought for the reopening of the hard border but also sought to demand basic democratic rights from the Polish government:

The last three months have been very moving for the border residents (…). We could not accept this and together with the municipal representatives we appealed to the decision-makers in Warsaw. Until the opening of the border on June 13th, our movement was active throughout the entire period and took part in press conferences in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, among others. Unfortunately, the Polish border inhabitants are still not able to move freely in our federal state, so that we once again had to appeal. This time to the state government in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. We consider the borderland/Pogranicze as one region, (…) and we also want our civil rights to be respected.3

Given that the region of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania decided not to allow day tourists to visit the region after the reopening of the border, many of whom would have come from Poland, protests continued but now also in the direction of the aforementioned coordinator from Poland (Opielka 2020).

Bilateral civil society: digital culture and education

As with everywhere else, the pandemic led to the cancellation of events in the realm of Polish–German relations. Among many others, the German–Polish Media Days that had been planned for the beginning of June in Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice, a space of intense sociopolitical exchange, were reduced to the online award of the Tadeusz-Mazowiecki Journalist Prize for investigative German–Polish topics. At least 900 planned exchange projects between German and Polish schools financed by the German–Polish Youth Office (DPJW) and numerous cooperation projects financed by the Foundation for German–Polish Cooperation were cancelled, and the International Youth Meeting Centre in Kreisau/Krzyżowa (Lower Silesia) was left empty (Hennig 2020).

In view of the lockdown, the three major German–Polish funding institutions supporting youth exchange, project development and science issued a joint statement in May 2020 to the funding recipients in both countries to motivate them to continue planning and developing (digital) visions. To that end, the funding conditions were drastically simplified (DPJW 2020).

In the realm of culture and education the German–Polish community was making use of the possibilities of digital technology. For instance, the German–Polish theatre festival, Unithea, founded twenty-three years ago at European University Viadrina, took place at the end of June 2020 online under the motto ‘contactless we come together’. The Berlin–Wroclaw Culture Train, founded in 2014 to connect Berlin to Wrocław as the European Capital of Culture, invited people to take a virtual trip with a cultural programme and the European New School for Digital Studies, the central joint project of European University Viadrina and the University of Poznań, opens for its very first semester in autumn with the International Master of Digital Entrepreneurship in Słubice (Hennig 2020).

Given the drastic effects that territoriality, in terms of closing national borders during spring 2020, had on particular places such as border regions, this paper analysed to what extent subnational actors were able to maintain cross-border activities in the Polish–German border region. The asymmetric setting of multilevel governance analysed here was particularly marked by unilateralism and a stronger centralization of the Polish structure, which limited the scope of agency for German federal governments and which eventually provoked the protests at the Polish–German border. Although the analysis was limited to documents which provided only an excerpt of interactions in multilevel transnational settings, it revealed the relevance of subnational authorities and infrastructures that had been developing over time. Moreover, it highlighted the significance of civil society actors in times of crisis, as they were able to lobby for a less drastic border-management response and helped to hold – through protest and digital activities – the web of bilateral relations together, especially in the fields of culture and education. The drastic economic effects for the local population could not be addressed here.

In more general terms, these findings reveal that in the sensitive case of the Polish–German border region, multilevel cross-border governance was not completely jeopardized by national decisions. These findings may enhance taking the spatial dimension of the coronavirus crisis and its transnational management into consideration for a more nuanced social science analysis of the effects of the pandemic, which, unfortunately, has gained momentum again.

Author thanks the Viadrina Institute for European Studies (IFES) of the European University Viadrina for supporting the language editing of this publication.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

1

Interview with a policy consultant in the state Chancery of the Federal State of Brandenburg, 12 June 2020.

2

Interview with a policy consultant in the State Chancery of the Federal state of Brandenburg 12 June 2020.

3

Quote by Katarzyna Werth from Löcknitz, co-initiator of the protests, documented in Presseschau 7/2020, edited and distributed by the German–Polish-Association Brandenburg.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Anja Hennig is Post-Doctoral researcher at the Chair for Comparative Politics at European University Viadrina (Frankfurt/Oder). Her research areas comprise comparative research on religion and morality politics, gender and illiberal politics, Polish-German relations and memory politics. Her regional focus is, besides Italy and Spain, on East-Central Europe with particular expertise on Poland.

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