25 years ago – on April 1, 1998 – the border bar between Austria and Italy was removed at the Brenner Pass. In the course of implementing the Schengen Agreement, the then provincial governors Wendelin Weingartner (Tyrol) and Luis Durnwalder (South Tyrol) lent a hand themselves. Both Weingartner and Durnwalder as well as the current regional heads Anton Mattle (Tyrol) and Arno Kompatscher (South Tyrol) spoke of a “historic moment” on Saturday.
The television pictures of the fall of the border bar on the Brenner Pass 25 years ago would have “moved him a lot,” Mattle admitted. Three years following Austria’s accession to the EU, border controls with Germany and Italy were “finally” abolished. “At the Brenner, the unifying idea of Europe has become much more noticeable and at the same time what separates us has receded into the background,” emphasized the governor. “When I and Luis Durnwalder lifted the border between Tyrol and South Tyrol, we were able to make the illegal border on the Brenner invisible,” said Weingartner. He referred to the potential of the region with – including the Trentino – 1.8 million inhabitants.
Kompatscher blew the same horn. Today, the European region of Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino is growing together once more, “what belongs together, to use Willy Brandt’s expression,” he emphasized. According to the South Tyrolean head of state, the elimination of border controls on the way to European unification “was a big and important step for us”. Durnwalder stated that it was “important that Austria and South Tyrol never let themselves be divided despite this border bar and that they found a new, modern form of transnational cooperation with the founding of the Europaregion Tirol-Südtirol-Trentino”. Even if the tearing up of Tyrol will always be wrong, we should look to the future. Today, South Tyrol, Tyrol and Trentino are closely linked through many cooperation projects.