Date and time
The Regional Studies Association’s fifth Central Eastern and Europe Conference 2026 took place and in partnership with Poznań University of Economics and Business, Poland. This three-day event brought together academics, policymakers, and researchers to share insights, perspectives, and the latest findings in regional studies, economic development, policy, and planning.
Central and Eastern Europe is having to navigate geopolitical turbulence and economic realignment at the national level while recognising and operating through a complex mosaic of subnational regions with deeply varied prospects, vulnerabilities, and opportunities. Current developments—be they political, economic, demographic, or environmental—are producing highly differentiated territorial impacts. A sustained focus on regional and subnational dynamics reveals both the persistence of old divides and the emergence of new growth poles or lagging peripheries, calling for truly place-based strategies. What is more, on the eve of budgetary shifts in the EU, understanding the role of regions in transforming the dynamics of CEE is only going to become more important.
This is because the legacies of past policies, sectoral specialization, and historic divisions have resulted in profound spatial differentiation across CEE. Today, the impacts of external shocks, climate policies, digital change, and migration play out very differently in resilient city regions, rural hinterlands, and once-thriving industrial towns. Recognizing these territorial disparities and focusing on regional empowerment, innovation, and place-based solutions is crucial for fostering truly resilient and inclusive development in Central and Eastern Europe.
The RSA Central and Eastern Europe Conference 2026 presented an important opportunity to champion a positive agenda for regional change and development based on a deep knowledge and understanding of what we can learn from knowing about regional pasts and regional presents. The event provided an important platform to discuss and debate regional futures, establish new connections, and assess options for practitioners and policymakers working towards brighter regional futures.
Special Sessions
This session examines the European Commission’s July 2025 proposal for the MFF 2028-2034, totalling nearly €2 trillion (1.26% of EU GNI), and its implications for Cohesion Policy. Key changes include National and Regional Partnership Plans to streamline cohesion funds like ERDF and Cohesion Fund, aiming to reduce disparities while prioritising competitiveness via the €409 billion European Competitiveness Fund for strategic technologies. Papers are invited on funding shifts—cohesion dropping from 62% to 44% of commitments—regional impacts, policy alignment with twin transitions, and strategies to balance convergence with innovation-driven growth. Abstracts can explore, and are not limited to, evidence-based reforms for a simpler, more impactful budget supporting EU competitiveness and resilience.
This session explores regional resilience amid overlapping crises like geopolitical tensions, climate shocks, economic disruptions, and health emergencies. It focuses on frameworks to measure vulnerability (inherent sensitivities), exposure (risk intensity), and outcomes (recovery trajectories). Papers are invited on empirical methods to assess EU regions’ capacities under polycrisis scenarios, drawing from e.g. Cohesion Policy evaluations. Abstracts should propose policy tools to enhance resilience, including early warning systems and targeted investments in twin transitions in vulnerable areas.
This session explores bordering regions through the lens of regional economics, assessing whether they function as integrated economic systems and the key determinants involved. Focus areas include synchronisation of business cycles, structural interlinkages like cross-border labour markets and supply chains, and shared infrastructure networks that drive economic cohesion. Papers are invited on empirical analyses—e.g., cycle correlation indices, input-output linkages, or gravity models—to evaluate integration levels and barriers such as regulatory divergences or geopolitical frictions. Abstracts should propose policy frameworks, leveraging EU Interreg programs, to enhance functional integration and competitiveness in these transnational zones
The aim of this session is to discuss the role of universities in regional ecosystems, especially European university alliances, not only the traditional knowledge transfer and innovation contribution, but also and most of all their role in a difficult time of complex transition, industrial revolution, that are reshaping societies. European alliances are actively working to increase the regional impact of universities, both within and across regions. The discussions in this session will provide new insights into how extra-regional collaboration of universities and other stakeholders of the quadruple helix might contribute to regional impact and European Cohesion.
This session explores how regional innovation pathways are shaped by the interactions between diverse actors and innovation intermediaries in Central and Eastern Europe. It focuses on the role of agency in processes of path dependence and path development, particularly in the context of post-socialist institutional transformations. Contributions are invited that examine how intermediaries facilitate knowledge flows, coordinate stakeholders, and influence the reconfiguration of regional innovation systems. The session aims to advance understanding of how territorial innovation emerges through multi-actor dynamics and how regions navigate between inherited structures and new development trajectories.
Session Description:
Fiscal decentralization is often expected to promote regional development by enabling subnational governments to tailor policies to local needs and mobilize resources more effectively. Yet its territorial effects depend critically on institutional design. Limited revenue autonomy, unclear expenditure assignments, large vertical fiscal imbalances, and poorly designed transfer systems may weaken accountability, reinforce transfer dependency, and generate uneven territorial outcomes.
This open session invites comparative and interdisciplinary contributions examining how fiscal decentralization, intergovernmental transfers, fiscal equalization systems, and fiscal rules shape regional inequalities, territorial resilience, and place-based development in Central and Eastern Europe. Particular attention will be given to how institutional capacity, economic structures, and territorial context influence the functioning and outcomes of decentralized governance systems.
Contributions are invited that examine how multilevel fiscal governance shapes regional development trajectories, infrastructure investment, metropolitan and non-metropolitan governance, and the capacity of regions and municipalities to respond to external shocks. The session particularly welcomes interdisciplinary contributions that examine how decentralization influences regional disparities, territorial cohesion, and development opportunities across both prosperous and lagging regions in Central and Eastern Europe. Contributions may also reflect on how post-socialist legacies and uneven state capacities mediate the effects of decentralization.
Session Organisers:
Katarzyna Wójtowicz, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland
Sławomir Franek, University of Szczecin, Poland
Dorota Wyszkowska, University of Bialystok / Statistical Office in Bialystok, Poland
Session Description:
Central and Eastern European (CEE) regions currently stand at a critical turning point. Their development trajectories, shaped in the past by post-socialist restructuring, EU cohesion policy, Just Transition, and decarbonisation, are now being reshaped by a rapidly changing geopolitical environment. There are growing concerns for long-term energy security and energy prices (Gritz & Wolff, 2025), access to critical raw materials, the rise of open strategic autonomy (Kivimaa & Entsalo, 2026), supporting dual use innovations (Stasik, 2026), supply chain vulnerabilities (Talandier & Hachaichi, 2026), sovereignty and security concerns (Friedrich et al., 2026), and concerns for long-term defence and security preparedness without engaging in defence washing (Hospers, 2025). At the same time, CEE regions are still struggling with challenges related to outmigration, labour shortages in critical future sectors, and an ageing population. Addressing these complex and interrelated challenges requires developing new conceptual and methodological tools to support CEE policymakers and regional practitioners.
This special session aims to bring together scholars and policy practitioners working at the intersection of regional sustainability transitions, economic geography, industrial and innovation policy, defence and security studies, and regional resilience. The session asks how CEE regions can, in the future, integrate the imperatives of industrial decarbonisation, just transitions, global economic competitiveness, security, strategic industrial autonomy, reshoring and resilience, which have often been treated separately in academic and policy discourse before. The session aims to draw attention towards scholarship at the intersection of these emerging priorities and the challenges and trade-offs involved in the process.
Themes and indicative topics
The session invites theoretical, empirical and policy-oriented contributions on themes including, but not limited to:
1. Opportunities for post-socialist industrial regions (specialising in coal, steel, automotive) supported by the Just Transition Fund for diversifying towards defence, dual-use technologies and reshoring industrial value chains
2. New hybrid skills and competencies required to prepare future regional labour markets in CEE regions ready for twin (green and digital) transitions and dual-use (civilian and defence deep tech) innovations
3. Mechanisms to develop regional resilience to address future challenges related to energy crises, civil preparedness, disruptions due to war and geopolitical uncertainties, supply chain disruptions, and climate risks
4. Emerging synergies and tensions between the multiple objectives related to the European Green Deal, global European competitiveness, Clean Industrial Deal, Readiness 2030 and Open Strategic Autonomy
5. Potential risks related to defence washing, green rent-seeking practices and democratic backsliding with respect to new strategic industrial policy initiatives
6. New future-oriented conceptual and methodological tools to analyse secure, resilient and green regional futures in Central and Eastern Europe
Session Organisers:
Suyash Jolly Department of Human Geography and Regional Development, University of Ostrava, Czechia
Gerrit Jan Hospers Department of Human Geography and Regional Development, University of Ostrava, Czechia
Anton Sentic ZHAW School of Engineering, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Winterthur, Switzerland
Special Panels & Territorial Activities
- MFF 2028-2034 and its impact on the Cohesion Policy and Competitiveness
- Regional Innovation Labs: Hands-on workshops on building innovation ecosystems in smaller cities and peripheries.
- Territorial Just Transition Forum: Exchange of best practices on TJTPs with regional policymakers, NGOs, and local stakeholders.
- Regional Disparities Mapping Booth: Real-time data visualization and discussion on territorial divides and convergences.
- Place-Based Policy Simulation: Interactive scenario-building to design tailored strategies for different types of regions (post-industrial, rural, border).
Local Organising Committee
Ida Musiałkowska, Poznań University of Economics and Business, Poland
Piotr Idczak, Poznań University of Economics and Business, Poland
Dorota Czyżewska-Misztal, Poznań University of Economics and Business, Poland
Maciej Pietrzykowski, Poznań University of Economics and Business, Poland
Paweł Capik, University of the West of England, UK
Monika Banaszewska, Poznań University of Economics and Business, Poland
Michał Faryś, Poznań University of Economics and Business, Poland
Łukasz Wróblewski, Poznań University of Economics and Business, Poland
Judyta Cabańska, Poznań University of Economics and Business, Poland
Wojciech Kisiała, Poznań University of Economics and Business, Poland
Scientific Committee
John Bachtler, European Policies Research Centre, UK
David Bailey, University of Birmingham, UK
Andrea Conte, JRC Seville, European Commission
Ugo Fratesi, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Mia Gray, University of Cambridge, UK
Sally Hardy, Regional Studies Association, UK
Sandrine Labory, University of Ferrara, Italy
Ida Musiałkowska, Poznań University of Economics and Business, Poland
Agnieszka Olechnicka, University of Warsaw, EUROREG
Laura Polverari, Università di Padova, Italy
Maciej Smętkowski, Centre for European Regional and Local Studies (EUROREG), University of Warsaw, Poland
Marijana Sumpor, Euro ekspertiza j.d.o.o., Croatia
Mario Vale, University of Lisbon, IGOT, CEG, Portugal
The conference is held as one of the events under 100th anniversary of Poznań University of Economics and Business