Scholarly record

HUNGARIAN-ROMANIAN CROSS-BORDER CO-OPERATION BETWEEN 1990 AND 2013

Z. Zakota

Abstract

Romania and Hungary, two countries of the former Soviet Bloc, have started on their post-communist project having pretty many similarities. In the beginning they adopted the same soviet model of social organization and similar institutional framework, but, until the end of the regime they matured following divergent paths. One of the most obvious differences between the two was their different attitude towards nationalism. While the western neighbour was constantly trying to avoid it, at least at the official level, the eastern one evolved into a far-eastern type nationalist communism. On the one side of the border Hungary was boiling its “goulash communism” while living in “the merriest barrack”, on the other side Romania was building “The Golden Age”, one of the most gruesome despotisms in the modern Europe. The fall of Communism has not brought the expected wealth for the recently liberated nations, which seem to compensate this lack of economic success, at least partly, by the revitalisation of national feelings. One of the most important changes in the period of time that followed the fall of communism was the softening of the very strictly monitored border lying between Hungary and Romania. This border have divided not only contiguous economic and cultural micro-regions, by separating villages from their urban centres, but also human communities and even families. The border villages became practically remote dead-ends and their situation started to improve only after 1989, but real change came only after the two countries started the adhering process to the European Union. Thanks to the initial assistance offered by the Union and the subsequent accession, there has been an about-turn in the relations existing between Romania and Hungary. The aim of this paper is to present the EU financial support for cross-border cooperation since 1990, with particular emphasis on the period 2007-2013. I present the nature of the projects involved in the program, their means of financing and the efficiency of their implementation. The targeted area contains 4 counties (NUTS-II level entities) on each part of the border, namely Szabolcs-Szatmar-Bereg, Hajdu-Bihar, Bekes and Csongrad counties on the Hungarian side, Satu Mare (Szatmar), Bihor (Bihar), Arad and Timiș (Temes) counties on the Romanian side. Undoubtedly, the trans-frontier projects helped a lot Hungarian and Romanian communities from both sides of the border. Regarding my sources of data, the study is mainly based on official figures provided by the lead authorities, the national statistical institutes and the Eurostat. In the end, I also try to outline some conclusions based on the results of the former period of financing and to sketch some forecasts of the actual one, 2014-2020. The paper also intends to be the starting point of a comparative study between the Hungarian-Romanian and the Romanian-Bulgarian cross-border co-operations in the above mentioned period of time.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2015/b21/s4.021

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