Geographica 44/2 (2013)

Acta Universitatis Palackianae Olomucensis Facultas Rerum Naturalium December 2013 Geographica 44 | 2
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Cross-border co-operation projects in the Hungarian-Slovak border area

Richard Hakszer

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Received: September 4, 2013
Accepted: November 22, 2013

Abstract
Nowadays, efficient development of regions and settlements is unimaginable without utilization of opportunities from tender or project sources. This is especially true for settlements in border areas, which regarding to their location near to the border and far from centralized industry and community in the centre of the state are mainly featured by bad economic and social situation. In order to support the development of borderlands, cross-border co-operation programmes were founded by the European Union and its predecessor organization in 1990s. In this study, the theoretical issues of cross-border co-operation are introduced, focusing on the Hungarian-Slovak border region. Also discussed are projects (and their applications and outputs) which were implemented in that area. It is focused on successes and also difficulties during the implementation process of CBC programmes in general and especially in the project level. The paper discusses the above mentioned themes on the regional (NUTS III) and district (NUTS IV) levels and in some cases on the settlement-pairs or very small areas, it also deals with the differences of the successful applicants and projects with their reasons and temporal changes, especially focused on regional disparity. Another way for analysing the Hungarian-Slovak CBC programmes is comparing all that were concerned with our border area during the pre-access programme PHARE CBC, and after joining the EU the Hungary-Slovakia-Ukraine Neighbourhood Programme and also Hungary-Slovakia CBC Programme 2007-2013, which is implementing today. In the paper, according to the previous I seek an answer to the question of which part of the examined NUTS III and IV level regions were the most active in submission of project proposals and in successfulness in tendering and also in implementation of CBC projects subsidised by the EU funds.

Key words
Hungary, Slovakia, cross-border co-operation (CBC), border, region, districts, EU funds, PHARE CBC, Interreg IIIA, Hungary-Slovakia-Ukraine Neighbourhood Programme, Hungary-Slovakia Cross Border Co-operation Programme 2007-2013, NUTS IV