Europäisches Zentrum für Föderalismus-Forschung

Europäische Länderberichte

Regionen im ungarischen EU-Beitrittsprozess: Lehrbuchreform oder symbolische Politik?

Jürgen Dieringer

S. 318-330

As membership in the European Union for Hungary comes closer and closer, the legal and institutional preparation was speeded up significantly during the last two years. A positivist approach replaced purely adaptive measures, aimed at just fulfilling accession requirements on the paper. For Hungarian sub-national entities this process brought about major changes. But the process of decentralization is just at its beginning. There are still more reform proposals than concrete actions taken. Not all symbolic solutions imposed on the regional structure so far could be replaced. As part of preparing Hungary for the requirements of European regional policy, the NUTS system was introduced, creating statistical regions on NUTS-II level. Although the formal requirements are fulfilled by such action, the functionality suffers major problems. The regions are not institutionalized. The systems of public administration and the institutional system built for implementing regional policy are not compatible. Taking this problems into consideration, finally, in the beginning of 2003 a plan to reform sub-national public administration was introduced with the support of major political actors. Together with several plans about how to create an efficient system to implement the grants of European structural funds, the problem of certain mismatches between the two tiers starts to be moderated. In order to be put into practice, however, several political fights between different interests in the political sphere have to be fought. If the plans discussed so far will be agreed on, for Hungary one could finally speak of a decentralized, in several respects even regionalized state.

Zitiervorschlag für diesen Artikel:
Dieringer, Jürgen 2003: Regionen im ungarischen EU-Beitrittsprozess: Lehrbuchreform oder symbolische Politik?, in: Europäisches Zentrum für Föderalismus-Forschung (Hrsg.): Jahrbuch des Föderalismus 2003. Föderalismus, Subsidiarität und Regionen in Europa, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, S. 318-330.