Starting in 2003, the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic – Department of Czech Border Regions has launched a three year research project entitled The Civic Dimension of Czech-German Relations in the Phase of the Accession of the CR to the European Union with an Emphasis on the Border Areas. The project was funded by the Czech Academy of Science´s Programme of Support for Targeted Research and Development, and it´s goal was the comprehensive empirical identification and documentation of the perception and image of Germany in the views and attitudes of the population of the Czech borderlands. The project followed from the systematic study of the theme that the Ústí nad Labem department of the Sociological Institute has been conducting since the beginning of the 1990s.
