The economic potential of crossborder areas. Opportunities and threats

The crossborder cooperation can boost the economic development for each participant country in the area, mostly depending on the depth of the relation between the neighbouring countries. The basis for it consists in the common interest for improvement of life standard, in ensuring a sustainable and harmonious framework and in the clearance of frontier barriers, restrictions or other factors. In view of improving of the social-economical position of the regional communities and removing of the negative effects of the border, the local communities are more and more involved in the regional collaboration. The present paper aims to define a baseline for a strategy concerning a potential multi-urban development pole, as specific case Suceava-Cernivtsi. It starts by establishing the actual general framework from economic, behavioural, geopolitical and administrative point of view in terms of the potential that can rise from a crossborder area. Further it gathers few field research conclusions from two field studies, one made on Romania-Ukraine-Republic of Moldova crossborder area and second one on a smaller geographic part, in the Romania-Ukraine crossborder area. Both, the general grounds rising from scientific literature and field research results, are contributing to a part of the SWOT analysis for Suceava-Cernivtsi crossborder area, in terms of opportunities and threats. Also, for this area we fix some reference points relevant for a strategy we will work on a wider research in order to capitalize the potential, as a future step. The paper is relevant as theoretical background for the field research that will follow and it implies a multidisciplinary approach on each of the mentioned domains in order to identify opportunities and threats. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.