Begegnungen25_Szarka
Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 25:171–187.
LÁSZLÓ SZARKA
The European context of minority autonomies
During the last two decades of the 20th century steps more significant than ever have been taken in the field of the acknowledgement and legal stipulation of minority rights in the majority of the 45 states of Europe. It is indicated by the extension of language rights, by the expansion of the protection of cultural heritage over minority cultures, respect of ethnic specificities, further on by the acknowledgement of community traditions and linking the minority regions and cultural centres to the developmental programmes maintained by the state.
The regulation of minority rights and their inclusion in laws from Spain to the Republic of Moldova, from Great Britain to Macedonia may be regarded as completed in an increasing number of multiethnic states under the influence of external as well as internal factors, particularly under the mutually strengthening influence of the legal institutions of the international protection of minorities. Exclusive concepts on the nation-state have become untenable for several reasons. Regionalism, that has become stronger all over Europe as an ideology mobilising the revolt of regions, has disclosed the existence and demands of regional minorities insisting on their historical traditions, or being in a disadvantageous position, pushed to peripheries. Huge crowds of immigrant minorities from Great Britain to Austria, and from Russia to Italy in the past decade have been increasingly making sharp distinctions between the indigenous and immigrant minorities impossible to maintain.
Nevertheless, Europe and the European Union itself are far from reaching consensus at least on a minimum of minority rights in the Member States. There are rather significant differences in the philosophy and policy of law concerning the assessment of individual and collective rights and of political rights to be ensured to minorities, including, for instance, the justification of the existence of ethnic parties and parliamentary representation, or of their rights to self-government.
In addition to territorial (local, regional) and non-territorial (cultural or personal) forms of autonomy various functional forms of autonomies may ensure the possibilities of the survival and development of the self-identity, culture, language, birthplace, and community existence of minorities. The most general descriptive definition of minority autonomy may, therefore be built of the following elements:
– Autonomy may be the form of self-determination in states where the currently prevalent idea of the state does not exclude federalism, regionalisation and the establishment of autonomies. When evolving autonomies it is not necessary to federalise the entire state, because autonomy is an asymmetric, sub- and super-ordinate division of labour, and the majority social group would continue to have more rights than the minority groups in the entire country, as the latter ones would acquire rights to self-government only in issues of language, culture, education, etc.
– Autonomy offers means to retaining the individual and group identity of those belonging to minorities. The minorities may represent their cultural, economic, and social interests autonomously, the groups involved would acquire legislative, executive and juridical authorisation for the management of their own affairs, and may set up autonomous sets of institutions.
– Consequently, autonomy means the division of authority between the central state authorities and the institutions of autonomy. Constant co-operation is needed between the central government and the executive body of autonomies, and the inclusion of arbitration forums and organisations is needed for disputed issues.
– Autonomy may be created in different ways: a) Based on international treaty, amendment of the constitution, minority statute, or on historical or customary law; b) By the reform of the internal public administrative system of the state; c) By an internal self-determination of the minority community acknowledged by the majority and by the state; d) As a corollary of the transformation or disintegration of the given state; e) As a consequence of an international legal decision in the wake of conflicts resulting in changes of the external borders of the state, or of its internal administrative boundaries and spatial ethnic structure, or aiming at those prevention or their closing; f) As a result of an agreement between the states involved; d) By the development of the special status of the characteristic conditions of an area that can be well delineated geographically, ethnically, historically, etc. (for instance, the so-called island autonomies like on Greenland, the Faroe-islands, the Aland-islands, or Corsica within France, or of the specificities of Scotland and Wales as historical provinces); g) The international community may also play a major role as it is shown by the examples of Kosovo or Gagausia.
– Autonomy may only be modified with the agreement of the state and of the autonomous community. The conflict-potential of the autonomy of minorities may decrease with the gradual limitation of the sovereignty of states, as, for instance, the separating borders of the 20th century are being replaced by state borders of the type of linking and permeability, the Euro-regions create opportunities for the development of autonomous multicultural regions by linking the border regions of states.
– The safest means for hindering the further “Balkanisation” of Europe and particularly of the South-eastern and East Central European regions may again be offered by the development of the system of autonomies, for the autonomous regions and communities share state sovereignty without the dissolution of the original states.
– Minority autonomy is the highest level of collective rights acknowledged and guaranteed by the state for the minority community capable of self-organisation.
– The central government would transfer part of the exercise of authority to the governing body of the autonomy in a region inhabited by the minority in matters of the minority language, education, culture, religion, etc. In the wake of the processes of European regionalisation the financial, developmental, and political autonomy of the regions becoming increasingly vigorously autonomous point to the direction of the autonomy of multiethnic regions. It necessitates the development of multicultural models in the case of minorities living along borders or in regions of mixed ethnicity even within a given region.1
The 1991 November resolution of the European Parliament, dealing with Union citizenship stated that the identity of the historical ethnic and linguistic communities on the territory of Member States, in other words not that of the new immigrants, and the coexistence of different ethnicities should be supported and the real equality of citizens should be ensured. In addition efforts should be made for the preservation of the special local, regional or group forms of self-governance and for the promotion of co-operation among regions and stretching over state borders.
The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly Recommendation 1201 (1993) on the additional protocol on the rights of minorities to the European Convention on Human Rights, passed on 1 February 1993, dealt with the possibility of establishing minority autonomies. Article 11 of the Council of Europe Recommendation states that minorities having territorial or regional base should have the right to have at their disposal appropriate local or autonomous authorities or to have a special status of the already existing administration.2
In case a state guarantees the most important minority rights only for individuals belonging to minority communities, in other words, if it continues not to acknowledge minority groups, this approach is an unambiguous proof that the given state, based on its self-definition as a nation-state, identifies the political nation constituting the state society with the majority nation, and does not wish to ensure separate legal status to minority groups within it. In these states the legal guarantees, meant to safeguard the equality of minorities, end with the declaration of the individual rights to the use of languages, of culture and religious rights.
Clearly the situation of the ethnic groups and national minorities of West, East, South, and East Central Europe have been increasingly often attempted to be settled in some comprehensive system by analyses and political planners in the late 20th and the early 21st centuries. In the case of minority groups having a territorial base and compact ethnic settlement network it is definitely the various forms of autonomy and systems of minority self-government that are considered as comprehensive models for solution. Partly, because they may lay the foundations to a practice acceptable by the majority as well as by the minority, and partly the historical antecedents, the ethnic and regional conditions, internal self-determination and self-governance as well as the needs of governmental control can be equally asserted by them. In addition cultural autonomy based on the principle of persons can be applied even in states where minorities live in Diaspora-situation, in dispersion, and in addition, elements of territorial and cultural autonomy may be jointly applied in many different ways.3
Of the currently existing 45 countries of Europe there are only five countries that have chosen federation or symmetrical regionalisation as the actual form of the state, covering the entire state, in keeping with its multiethnic structure, such as: Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Republic of Moldova. Switzerland, though, is not the federation of the Swiss national communities but of cantons, but the cantons cover the ethnic structure of the state, too. The basis of the regionalisation of Spain was again the joint set of criteria of the historical and the national. In Moldova, concerning the Russian majority Transdnestria where the legal authority of Kishinev has been nominal only since the armed conflict of 1992, neither the statute on autonomy of 1997, nor the federal plan of settlement, published by the Moldovan government on 9 July 2002, was implemented.4
Of the European states of the early 21st century the ethnic and national minorities have rights to self-governance based on ethnicity only in 18 countries, in other words, they have some form of autonomy based on the territorial or personal principle. The colourfulness of the practice of self-governance is indicated by the rather variegated ethno-political alternatives and solutions of autonomy. Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Moldova, Norway, Russia, Serbia-Montenegro, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, and Sweden belong to this group of states.5
The central state has renounced part of the exercise of authority in favour of the minorities concerned or part of them, the legislators and executive bodies of autonomies may make decisions on their own, or jointly with the central government and governmental organisations, or may dispose about issues delineated by the basic law of the autonomy.
The legal order of three states, such as Belgium, Spain, and Hungary, ensures that all principles of minority self-governance may assert themselves to some extent.
Those states constitute the next group where all the resident and not immigrant minorities of the given state are equally entitled to enjoy rights to self-governance, though they may be different in view of the demands and possibilities of the various minority groups. Estonia, Finland, Italy, Norway, Serbia-Montenegro, Sweden and Switzerland belong to this category. Those states may be classified under the third category where the various minorities occasionally have large-scale self-governing authorisation and forms of territorial and cultural autonomy, at the same time communities that may be more populous than the former ones are excluded from the enjoyment of self-government rights by the laws of the given state. Lithuania, Russia and Slovenia belong to this category.6
As far as the three specifically mentioned European models of autonomy are concerned, here again, significant differences may be found. The rigorous linguistic and institutional division of Belgium into Walloonia, Flanders and Brussels, further on to the German autonomous community is the exemplary variant of the Swiss type of separating self-governance, but its operational disturbances, the survival of separating lines between the communities indicate that the reserves of the Belgian model may be exhausted within a foreseeable time. In addition, when the country was divided by languages and regions no separate region was created for the German community, therefore that community cannot enjoy a significant part of ethnic rights related to regional public administration.7
On the Hungarian model of minority autonomy
The Hungarian model of minority self-governance that has evolved on the basis of Act XXXVII of 1993 on national minorities ensures individual and community rights to thirteen ethnic and national minorities, and has made possible the election and operation of local and national minority self-governments. Elements of cultural autonomy are mixed with those of territorial autonomy through the local minority self-governments in the Hungarian model in so far as the minority self-governments supplement to some extent the local self-governments in decisions related to minorities in settlements inhabited by them, and they can operate as partners in the most successful cases. The national minority self-governments can turn to the government and parliament, or other national, regional, and county organisations in the interest of protecting their specific minority interests.8
After the experimental period of the first ten years, the Hungarian government and legislature initiated the modification of Act LXXVII of 1993, in two fundamental questions, besides some minor alterations, in the interest of ensuring conditions that would allow for a real cultural autonomy of minorities. Accordingly, participation in the election of minority self-governments is linked to electoral lists and registration on them; and local minority self-governments can be set up only in settlements that are approved of by the functioning national minority self-governments. It is a major question, however, in what numbers the minorities of Hungary would register on the electoral list of the different minorities as currently the vast majority of them have a dual identity and it is mostly Hungarian language that dominates among them, and to what extent dual identity and the background of Hungarian language would prove to be suited for the development and operation of separate cultural and educational institutions.
The parliamentary ombudsman for minorities has been initiating the revision of the election and competencies of minority self-governments since 1998. In fact he did not find it acceptable that “active as well as passive rights to election at the elections of (local) minority self-governments are equal, every citizen possessing the right to vote, may participate either as a candidate or as a voter”.9 In an optimal case minority rights, including the right to elect minority self-governments, should relate only to groups that can be defined by nationality criteria. The published results of the 2001 census indicate, however, that the vast majority of persons belonging to national minority communities inhabiting settlements, define themselves as of dual identity in respect of nationality, culture, and language, they stated their dual attachment, and even possessing two mother tongues.
The modification of the law passed by the Hungarian government in the spring of 2004 is able to present the electoral register, representing only a formal legal solution, as a new tool and it may presumably mean a way out of the blind alleys of ‘ethno-business’ for minority groups that are able to find their balance in identity policy.10
A further major question is whether the Gypsy linguistic, regional and cultural communities, presenting marked internal differentiation on levels of self-confession, and ethno- and identity policy, corresponding to reality, would accept the framework conditions of a uniform Roma policy, and whether the different Roma groups, already confronted to each other on the basis of party politics, would be able to strive to achieve consensus.11 The future of the Hungarian minority self-governance depends on the acceptance of specific ethnic realities in spatial and identity structure, on the evolution of adequate institutional forms, on expanding the possibilities of co-operation between the spheres of self-government and civil society, and on the success of ethno-political programmes of multicultural, regional and integrative types. The demographic decrease suffered by the minorities in Hungary, together with the majority nation, with the processes of changing language and identity that are apparently impossible to stop in several small traditional minority regions and cities of the country, would hardly justify the measures making the regulations more rigorous and well-founded in the formal legal sense of the term.
The urban structures are even more of the nature of Diaspora than the rural ones, which makes the establishment and maintenance of institutions and institutional operation more difficult even in the case of cultural autonomies when the concentrated and compact structures are missing. The assertion of the will of more populous minorities during the modification of the law mostly pushed the presentation of the specific interests of small communities into the background: small groups of a membership of few thousand or even less people, having only one or two traditional settlements or not having even those, would be able to utilise the otherwise rightly more rigorous system of self-governance to their benefit under the more difficult conditions.12
Autonomies of Hungarian minorities
The Hungarian minority communities have the legally guaranteed means of cultural autonomy in three of the seven states neighbouring Hungary: In Slovenia Article 63 of the Constitution of 1991 stipulates that the indigenous Italian and Hungarian communities, irrespective of the number of their members, may establish self-governing bodies and may make autonomous decisions in issues jointly defined with the state institutions.
Based on Act 57 of 1994, the Italian and Hungarian indigenous minorities may participate in the work of local self-governments and have a decisive role in affairs related to the minorities in “areas of mixed nationalities”. Act 65 of 1994 on the self-government of ethnic communities stipulates that the two indigenous minorities may set up separate territorial self-governing bodies in villages (and small areas comprising several villages) inhabited by them.13
The Croatian Constitution also acknowledges only the autochthonous minorities, including the Hungarian minority reduced during the war years, as factors constituting the state. On 13 December 2002, the Act on national minorities made possible the establishment of minority self-governments. The first elections were held in 2003. The self-governing representative bodies elected earlier were enlarged by further minority representatives depending on the proportion of minorities. In addition the minorities set up their minority self-governments on county, city and district levels and they have significant decision-making competencies related to minority affairs.14
The issue of the autonomy of the Hungarian minority in Serbia (Vojvodina) reached the phase of a worded and approved programme of autonomy. The general assembly of the Hungarian Democratic Community of the Vojvodina, led by András Ágoston, and held on 25 April 1992 at Magyarkanizsa, passed the draft of autonomy linking elements of cultural and territorial autonomy to the setting up of local self-governments of settlements of special status.
The Hungarian autonomy movements of the Vojvodina are characterised by three important features if compared to the efforts to reach autonomy by other minority Hungarians. First of all it was the context of the Yugoslav crisis and the South-Slav wars that simultaneously lifted the issue of the Hungarian minority into an international legal environment and separated it from the hot zones and conflicts of the crisis zone on the Balkans. Another important distinguishing feature was regionally joining of forces aiming at the restoration of the former autonomy of the multiethnic province of the Vojvodina that was missing in the case of all the other efforts of Hungarians achieving autonomy. Finally, there is a grave negative burden on the Hungarian autonomy movement of the Vojvodina at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries: the presumably deepest cleavage caused by the rivalry among the minority Hungarian parties was made by the disputed optimal form of minority autonomy, and modes and alternatives of the path leading to it and of selecting the potential allies.15
Plans for autonomy of minority Hungarians
From 1990 onwards the efforts of the Hungarian national minorities in Transcarpathia (Ukraine), in Slovakia and Transylvania (Rumania) for autonomy also regarded the forms of cultural and territorial autonomy, and the combination of local and settlement-level rights to self-governance as the most adequate expressions of their rights of internal national self-determination. A significant part of the three communities, different in size, live in areas that are ethnically compact ones. It is particularly in the case of the Hungarian minority living at the Transcarpathia that an opportunity for autonomy would offer itself, for more than 80 per cent of the community lives in an ethnic stripe parallel to the Hungarian state border, in settlements of Hungarian majority and contiguous in the districts of Beregszász, Nagyszőlős, Munkács and Ungvár. Despite the successful referendum of 1999 the authorities of Ukraine and the Transcarpathia were not susceptible and understanding regarding the idea of territorial autonomy, more over, they do not even allow the development of the set of institutions for cultural autonomy.16
The first Hungarian party founded in Slovakia, the Independent Hungarian Initiative (FMK), in its declaration of the programme of 19 January 1990, laid stress on that “the national minorities should reach full self-determination in the field of culture (including school education)”, besides legislating on collective rights. It would have meant, as the programme stated, that they wished to create the “full educational system of Hungarians in Czechoslovakia from créches to higher education” within a short period of time.17 Standing for self-governance was even of a more general validity and was included in a document passed jointly by the representatives of FMK and Publicity Against Violence, the movement conducting the change of the system in Slovakia. The declaration wished to lay down the principles of the “coexistence of nations, national minorities and ethnic groups”: “Starting from the collective rights of nations, national minorities and ethnic groups they are entitled to have self-governance in all issues that pertain exclusively to them, further on, they are entitled to make equal and joint decisions in all issues that relate to them as well.”18
Representatives of the two other Hungarian parties of Slovakia, formed in early 1990, the Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement (MKDM) and the Coexistence Political Movement submitted a joint draft Constitution to the president of the Slovakian National Council during the closing phase of the partition of Czech-Slovakia in December 1992 “on the legal position of the national minorities and ethnic groups of the Slovak Republic”. The draft called the “national minorities and ethnic groups” factors constituting the state, and the minority rights as such natural rights that “cannot be withdrawn and cannot be eliminated”. In addition to the right to identity of minorities and to its preservation the draft wished to ensure the right of minorities to representation in parliament, to controlling minority rights, and further on the right to the birthplace, to the preservation and development of national heritage and to the preservation of the ethnic structure of their place of residence. The draft wished to assert the principle of self-governance by recommending “the right to self-governance in the field of education, culture and informatics, and the right to the administration of regions inhabited by minorities”. In addition the proposal also contained the right to maintain international relations and a proportionate and fair share of the budget.19
The Hungarian drafts of autonomy, made in the 1990s, may be classified behind the drafts of the Vojvodina due to their unclear theoretical background and mixed type of demands. At the same time it is a great advantage of the idea enjoying the already declared support and continuous solidarity granted to the lopsided but existing Hungarian settlements’ self-governments in Slovakia that the Hungarians living there in a compact settlement structure may be able to launch a model of democratic association in a favourable legal and political power field even by a minor modification of the current Slovakian system of self-governance, for instance, on the basis of a minority law of liberal spirit within the framework of the European Union.
It is not accidental that the history of the Hungarian autonomy plans of Transylvania is the most far-flung and contradictory. The Hungarian Democratic Federation of Romania (RMDSZ), though, has put the demand for autonomy into the focus of its programme ever since its foundation, yet the cause of minority self-governance in Transylvania seems to be rather hopeless due to a number of external and internal reasons, similarly to the case of the Transcarpathia. Drafts, and alternatives, however, were not missing.20
The authors of the Transylvanian autonomy plans of Hungarians try to describe and systematise the theoretical foundations of a solution of minority self-governance, even if on the basis of different theoretical starting points and political motivations, but always in due humility granted to the legal status considered as optimal from the angle of the Hungarian minority in Transylvania, while involuntarily they mostly disregard the conditions of the Romanian public administration and the anti-autonomy behaviour of governmental policy. The majority of documents are closely linked to the principles of self-governance and autonomy worded as a strategic aim fixed in the programme of the RMDSZ.
The authors of the drafts tried to clarify first and foremost which combination of the territorial and cultural autonomies would be best suited to the Hungarian ethnic group of Romania living under conditions of bloc, mixed and dispersed communities in an ethnic sense of the term. Each author of the drafts was aware that it was only the mixed models that may be considered under the Transylvanian conditions, and even drafts pertaining to the territorial autonomy of the Székler land referred to self-governmental rights to be ensured to other small regions inhabited by Hungarians and to people living in dispersion.
In addition the autonomy drafts well document the continuous quest for a way out that wishes to find the possible modes of the amendment of the Romanian Constitution indispensable to the realisation of autonomy. So far the undisputable growth of the weight of local and county self-governments and the utilisation of opportunities deriving from the process of regionalisation seem to be the most fertile ideas, but every document contains allusions and references to the West European models of autonomy, to European recommendations, and to challenges of the process of integration.
The Romanian majority parties and the practice and experience of the governmental and opposition co-operation of the RMDSZ divided, and during 2003 and 2004 even politically split the Transylvanian Hungarian public life in the assessment of whether if was permissible and possible to “suspend”, even if temporarily, the autonomy programmes in the interest of changing the rigid refusal of the various pragmatic forms of co-operation by majority public opinion and of the Romanian political class. The makers and analysts of the autonomy plans therefore are continuously facing the contradictions between a model of consolidation and the models of autonomy.21
The Hungarian autonomy plans of the Carpathian Foothills, of South Slovakia and Transylvania are rather far from realisation. The internal and external discussions around them and the related analyses, however, were not at all in vain. Partly the domestic and foreign political interrelationships of efforts made for autonomy can be clarified, together with the historical determination of the autonomy plans, the reasons of majority refusal, and the order of steps necessary to obtain international support. It also requires detailed analysis how the different interpretations of autonomy could become issues leading to internal conflicts and party splits, and what role participation in government played in changing the behaviour of the minority Hungarian parties of the three countries.
Minorities of the East Central European region in the Union
The relationship between the majority and the minority can be assessed usually by three complex considerations in multiethnic states, such as:
– 1. What is the majority acceptance of minorities like, how strong prejudices against and separations from the minorities are, and what is the loyalty of minorities towards the state and majority nation like?
– 2. To what extent the majority and the minority are separated, and how far the minority groups have been integrated into the common society of the state? Is it the processes of assimilation, or those of integration that determine the daily existence of minorities? Do the minorities follow community patterns of development, of preserving and mediating values, or, are they forced to settle down for a defensive, folklore-making and tradition-saving behaviour?
– 3. How far the equality before the law and participation at various levels of political life are ensured for minorities within the common state? Does the majority acknowledge the community rights of the minorities; does it ensure a legal status for them that grants dominant decision-making rights in issues indispensable in the regions and settlements inhabited by them, or to the cultivation and development of their community identity?
The legal institutes of minority self-governance, such as personal or cultural autonomy, various forms of local, regional, or territorial autonomy represent the highest levels of regulation. The most important precondition of the acceptance of autonomy is a well-functioning set of democratic institutions, majority support, constitutional background, the creation of legal safeguards, a demand for subsidiary policy close to people, mutual trust and respect, pushing ethnic prejudices and conflict situations into the background, respecting the traditions of coexistence, and the loyalty of the minority community.
The Union enlargement process has focused attention to the unsolved nature of several important basic issues, and that too not only in the acceding states, but on the continent as a whole. The issue of the often unsettled public law status of minority communities is one of them. A settlement, however, requires the clarification of the possible community answers of minorities, and of their ethno-political and identity-political alternatives as well. Partly it would be important to develop the legal institutes and organisational background of community-level co-operation with the majority society and the metropolitan country. Partly the chances and feasibility of community programmes that suit best the conditions and demands of the minority group by arranging the ranking of short and long-term tasks of community building should be surveyed, together with the missing and necessary means, the resources and external supporters indispensable to the implementation of the programme.
The preference laws, the legal institutes of European citizenship and dual citizenship may simultaneously offer assistance to the minorities in the integrating East Central European space, but may also become sources of undesirable conflicts if mutual agreements are missing. Ultimately those measures would prove to be advantageous for the community-building of minority groups that offer a free acceptance of identity, a free choice of the place of residence and work, of school within the relationship between the community and the individual, and offer resources to livelihood and living standards in the birthplace and chosen place of residence comparable to the other countries of the region.
The East European process of enlargement in 2004 called the attention of everyone also to the importance of European basic values; reference should be made to the preservation of multicoloured culture, to the elimination of disadvantages deriving from regional differences, to the freedom of scientific research, to the free exchange of cultural values, to the unhindered operation of the economy, and to the free flow of labour. All these values may mean a meaningful gain to the minorities essentially interested in the dismantling of state borders if neither assimilation nor migration would threaten more their community existence than today.
A growing role attributed to honouring the basic values of democracy, to the quality of political culture and the freedom of civic organisations is an important consequence of the enlargement process besides considerations of security policy. Such political values have been put to the limelight together with general principles like freedom from discrimination, self-governance, regionalism, contacts to be kept without obstacles between nations, ethnic groups and cultures, multicoloured culture, and safeguarding the rights of ethnic groups of different languages, religion and culture.
The applicant and candidate countries’ set of democratic institutions, internal stability, including the proper handling of domestic and foreign political risk factors related to minorities played an important role among the conditions of accession set by the Council of Europe in the 1990s and later on by the European Union (Copenhagen criteria). The legal regulation of linguistic and educational rights was made a compulsory “homework” for states wishing to accede. And Mečiar’s Slovakia and Milošević’s Yugoslavia and all the states of the region with the exception of Romania in the early 1990s tried to meet these expectations in their own way.
From May 2004 onwards and following Austria that had become an EU-member earlier of the East Central European region, Hungary and two states of the seven neighbouring ones, such as Slovakia and Slovenia, and two states of the Visegrád Group became parts of the Union, hence they have once again become members of a common federation of states and community of nations, for the first time since 1918. The six states and another two or three countries of the region that may, hopefully, accede soon, may create safeguards at the peripheral regions of the Union in the first decade of the 21st century that would make these states and the nations living there suitable to catch up with the development in progress in the cores, and to eliminate the logic of stocks of the nation-state and to the free co-operation of regions and national communities. All this may be guaranteed by the consistent and joint assertion of the common principles and decisions within the Union.
It is Hungary of the newly acceded countries of the European Union that is most interested in the settlement of the minority issue. It has at least five important reasons, such as:
– Slowing down the advanced assimilation of the minorities living in Hungary, a cultural and linguistic re-vitalisation of those communities;
– The culture carrier and culture creating ability of Hungarian minority communities living in the seven states neighbouring Hungary. The mediating potential of the bilingual minorities is an irreplaceable factor in the integration of the region and in the maintenance of its cohesion.
– Insistence on belonging to the universal Hungarian cultural, linguistic and national community of the 2.5 million non-Hungarian citizens belonging to the minority Hungarian communities, their Hungarian identity, the economic weight of those communities, their ability to maintain and create culture, their linguistic, cultural, and political mediating, stabilising and initiating role;
– The specifically mixed ethno-regional structure of the East Central European region, and the peripheral situation of regions along the borders that have accumulated serious problems;
– A common task of the region: the hopeless situation of the Gypsy/Roma communities is demanding an urgent and effective solution.
The minority issue is the Archimedean point of democracy as it was defined by Oszkár Jászi almost one hundred years ago. Jászi pressed for the free use of language of minorities, their education in the mother tongue, and a good public administration close to the people in the minimum programme of the Hungarian nationality policy of the early 20th century, when he took into account signs of the disintegration of the Habsburg Monarchy and of the internal disintegration of the historical Hungarian Kingdom within it.22 A system that is unable to guarantee even these minimum conditions to its minorities on an adequate level endangers to some extent its own democratic setup and the realisation of the principle of the equality of citizens. In the early 21st century the principles listed by Jászi for the management of the minority issue are still valid without change. The documents for the protection of minorities that regulate the rights of the European minorities on an international level since 1989, have basically laid down the linguistic and educational rights of minorities, too, and have partly made them controllable on the basis of reports demanded from states.
The most important safeguards of equality are still the assurance of rights to the mother tongue and to education for ethnic groups living in minority position and to people belonging to those communities, identical with the rights of those who live in majority position, as well as good public administration, and they constitute some form of autonomy in the current European ethno-political approach. Significant changes have already taken place in the East Central European minority communities and in the public administration of territories inhabited by them, further on, in the regulation of the use of language and cultural rights of minorities.
Is it possible to find reassuring solutions for all in an integrating East Central European space with the logic of the nation-state and the reflexes of a centralised state for issues like massive migration accompanying the free flow of labour, the free choice of school, and the differences of living standards among countries? Is it possible to halt the assimilation of minorities, separated for decades or centuries from the centres of their cultures, by governmental programmes, or the total squeezing of the Roma communities to the periphery of the society? How can a public life free of discrimination be guaranteed, how could those processes of segregation be stopped that push groups in a disadvantageous position, and primarily the communities of the Roma, and regions (such as the border regions along the Trianon borders that have become peripheries in the sense of economy, infrastructure and labour market) into ever more difficult situations? The right to self-governance of minorities and regions inhabited by them, minority autonomy is one of the most effective legal and political means to handle the above issues effectively. The autonomy of minority ethnic groups is not only the most important tool for sharing authority, but also for sharing responsibility and for a distributive nationality policy.
The development of autonomies is an extremely important legal institute for the prevention and management of conflicts, for ensuring the symbolic and real exercise of power, and representation of minority groups, for a fruitful dialogue between the majority and the minority, and for the elimination of differences among small areas and regions and of ethnic prejudices.
Emigration has been reduced to a practically negligible level in communities that are assured of their cultural and linguistic rights and that can exercise their rights to self-governance. Taking over the management of their own affairs by the minority Hungarian communities in Transylvania, in the Vojvodina (Serbia-Montenegro) and at the Transcarpathia, ensuring local decision-making competencies and the means to implementation would mean more than any subsidy granted by foundations for really progressing in their birthplace. Naturally it should be just as importantly in the interest of the respective states, for the fastest road not only to internal stability, but also to the economic strengthening of the minority regions currently in a difficult situation, would also lead via self-governance and forms of regional autonomy.23
Hungary unambiguously indicated by its committed activity for spelling out minority rights when the final text of the European Constitution was discussed, that it made efforts to play its role deriving from its additional interests and constitutional obligations. Luckily Hungarian diplomacy is not left alone in this effort. The Recommendation passed by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, based on the Gross Report made for it, advises the Council of Ministers to prepare an international legal agreement that would be based on principles worded in the draft of the European Charter of regional self-governments, and would consider the experiences of the Member States, and would allow for the acknowledgement and support of the common principles of the forms of regional and cultural autonomy.23
There is hope on this basis for the Hungarian national minorities living in the neighbouring countries and for the non-Hungarian ethnic groups living in Hungary that their efforts to obtain autonomy would not only be favourably received and supported by some states and governments. Despite every counter-effort and the phobia of autonomy in the case of some states concerned, the international organisations also begin to understand that minority autonomies under democratic conditions offer suitable legal frameworks for the prevention of conflicts as well as for a lasting and mutually advantageous, controllable regulation of the relations between majorities and minorities.
Notes
1
Potier Tim: Autonomy in the 21st Century; through Theoretical Binoculars. Commission on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights Working Group on Minorities, 14–18. May 2001. E/CN4/Sub.2/AC.5/2001.CRP.1 http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/bhr/ english/special_issues/CEDIME-unwgm2001/G0112125.doc; Kimminich, O.: A Federal Right of Self-Determination, in: Tomuschat, C. (ed.): The Modern Law of Self-Determination, The Hague, 1993. 83–100; Ruth Lapidoth: Autonomy Flexible Solutions to Ethnic Conflicts, Washington 1996; Rehman Javid, ‘The Concept of Autonomy and Minority Rights in Europe’, in: Cumper. P. and Wheatley, S.(eds.): Minority Rights in the ‘New’ Europe (1999); Jennifer Jackson Preece, “National Minority Rights vs. State Sovereignty in Europe: Changing Norms in International Relations?,” Nations and Nationalism 3, no. 3, 1997, pp. 345-64.
2
Majtényi Balázs–Vizi Balázs (eds): A kisebbségi jogok… 155; Gál Kinga: Minority Governance on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century, in: uő: Minority Governance…. 1-8.; Gianfranco Martini–Folke Öhman: Territorial autonomy and National Minorities (10/05/98) www.coe.int/T/E/ Clrae/_4._Sessions_of_the_CLRAE/1._Plenary_sessions/6._5th_Session; Majtényi Balázs–Vizi Balázs (szerk.): A kisebbségi jogok... 184–186; Gabriel N. Toggenburg: A Rough Orientation Through a Delicate Relationship: The European Union’s Endeavours for (its) Minorities, European Integration online Papers (EIoP) Vol. 4 (2000) N° 16. http://www.eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/ 2000-016a.htm.
3
Potier Tim: Autonomy in the 21st Century; through Theoretical Binoculars. Commission on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights Working Group on Minorities, 14–18. May 2001. E/CN4/Sub.2/AC.5/2001.CRP.1; Ruth Lapidoth: Autonomy Flexible Solutions to Ethnic Conflicts, Washington 1996;.
4
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5
Chalmers, Douglas: Scottland Year Zero – From Words to Action, in: Gál Kinga: Minority Governance… 125–149. Apáthy Zsófia–Győri Szabó Róbert: Devolúció és nemzeti identitás: Skócia, Wales. Pro Minoritate, 2002. nyár, 175–202; Havas Péter: Decentralizálási folyamat Nagy-Britanniában: a skót és walesi devolúció (autonómia) in: Tabajdi Csaba (szerk.): A kisebbségi önazonosság megőrzésének európai tapasztalatai, Budapest 2002; MacCrone,David: Skócia: ország, társadalom, nemzet? Regio 2000.1. 68–85; Grúber Károly: Európai identitások: régió, nemzet, integráció, Budapest, 2002. 123–130; Thomson, Andrew: The Politics of Autonomy, www.cowac. org/thomson.htm+minority+autonomy&hl=hu&ie=UTF-8.; www.minelres.lv/NationalLegislation/Russia/Russia_CultAut_English.htm. Dobrovits Mihály–Kende Tamás: Távol Moszkvától. Utak a jelcini és a Jelcin utáni Oroszország megértéséhez, Beszélő, 2001. 1. http://beszelo. c3.hu/01/01/05dobrov.htm
6
Pan, Christoph–Pfeil, Beate Sybille: Minderheitenrechte in Europa. Handbuch der europäischen Volksgruppen, Bd. 2. Wien 2002. 10–11.
7
Gross, Andreas: Positive experiences of autonomous regions as a source of inspiration for conflict resolution in Europe, Doc. 9824, 2003. 3 June 2003, Report, Political Affairs Committee, Rapporteur: Mr Gross, Switzerland, Socialist Group.
8
Bodáné Pálok Judit: A magyar kisebbségi törvény megszületésének körülményei, Acta Humana, 1993; Kaltenbach, Jenő: Hungarian Report, in: Kranz, Jerzy (ed.): Law and Practice of Central European Countries in the Field of National Minorities Protection After 1989. Warszawa, 1998. 61–131; Csefkó Ferenc–Pálné Kovács Ilona (szerk.): Kisebbségi önkormányzatok Magyarországon, Budapest 1999; Eiler Ferenc–Kovács Nóra: Minority Self-Governments in Hungary, in: Gál Kinga (ed.): Minority Governance…. 171–196; Walsh, Niamh: Minority Self-Government in Hungary: Legislation and Practice, Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe, July, 2002. www.ecmi. de/jemie
9
Beszámoló a Nemzeti és Etnikai Kisebbségi Jogok Országgyűlési Biztosának tevékenységéről, 1998. január 1 – december 31. http://www.obh.hu/nekh/hu/beszam/beszamol.htm.
10
Pap András László: Európai kisebbségpolitika, magyar kisebbségi önkormányzatok – jogpolitika, harmonizáció és kollízió. Esettanulmány az etnikai-nemzetiségi identitás és választójogi korrupció tárgykörében, http://europa.kontextus.hu/muhely/Muhely_Pap%20dolgozata.doc
11
Forray R. Katalin–Mohácsi Erzsébet (szerk.): Esélyek és korlátok. A magyarországi cigány közösség az ezredfordulón. Pécs 2002. 52-65. http://www.btk.pte.hu/tanszekek/romologia/dok.
12
Czibulka Zoltán (ed.): 2001. évi népszámlálás. 4. Nemzetiségi kötődés. A nemzeti, etnikai kisebbségek adatai, Budapest, 2002; Szarka László: Etnikai változások a 2001. évi magyarországi népszámlálás tükrében, In: Kovács Nóra–Szarka László (ed.): Tér és terep II. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 2003.
13
Pan, Christoph–Pfeil, Beate Sibylle: Minderheitenrechte... 438; Ethnic Minorities in Slovenia, Ljubljana 1994. 40–42, 48–49; Komac, Miran: Protection of Ethnic Communities in the Republic of Slovenia, Ljubljana 1998. 68–69; ifj. Korhecz Tamás: Kisebbségi önkormányzatok… 941–945; Pataki G. Zsolt: Overwiev of Proposals… in: Gál Kinga: Minority Governance…. 251–257; Gerencsér Balázs–Juhász Albin: A Kárpát-medencei magyar autonómiák lehetősége az ezredfordulón. Magyar Kisebbség 2000. 3. 319–324.
14
Pataki G. Zsolt: Overview of Proposals… in: Gál Kinga: Minority Governance… 257–260; Caspersen, Nina: The Torny Issue of Ethnic Autonomy in Croatia: Serb Leaders and Proposals for Autonomy, Journal of Etnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe, 2003. 3. z) http://www.ecmi. de/jemie/download/Focus3-2003_Caspersen.pdf; Domini, Mirjana: National Minorities in the Republic of Croatia, Central Europe Rewiew; http://www.ce-review.org/00/19/domini19.html; Zoran Daskalovic: Withering Away of Ethnic Minorities in Croatia, Dossier on the Rights and Protection of Ethnic Minorities in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia. Aimpress. www.aimpress.ch/dyn/ dos/archive/data/2003/30624-dose-01-06.htm; Tatalovic, Sinisa. Minority Peoples and Minorities. Zagreb, 1997; Új Képes Újság (8) 2002. 48-50. 2003. 2-5. 21-22. stb. szám http://www. hhrf.org/umku; Gerencsér Balázs–Juhász Albin: A kárpát-medencei magyar autonómiaformák… 324–328.
15
Magyar autonómia, A VMDK állásfoglalása az önkormányzatról. Szakértői tervezet a VMDJK. Közgyűlésének dokumentuma, Magyarkanizsa, 1992; Gaál György–Bozóki Antal (ed.): A vajdasági magyarság és az autonómia, Újvidék 2003; Korhecz, Tamás: Chances for Ethnic Autonomy in Vojvodina: Analysis of the Latest Autonomy Proposal of Hungarian Political Parties in Vojvodina, Gál Kinga: Minority Governance… 217–297.
16
A KMKSZ Autonómiabizottsága által készített tervezet A Kárpátaljai Magyar Autonómia (KMA) alapelveiről, 1991. január, a KMKSZ hivatalosan az ukrán parlamentbe beterjesztett törvényjavaslata Ukrajna törvénye a Magyar Autonóm Körzetről, 1992. április. www.mtaki.hu/adattar. Gerencsér Balázs–Juhász Albin: A kisebbségi autonómia (működő modellek, magyar elképzelések), Budapest, 2001. id. m http://www.hhrf. org/autonomia; Csernicskó István: A magyar nyelv Ukrajnában (Kárpátalján), Budapest 1998. 72–77; Ríz Ádám: Az 1990 óta született autonómiakoncepciók összehasonlítása, Korunk 2000.1. http://www.hhrf.org/korunk/0001/ 1k19.htm; Pataki G. Zsolt: Overview of Proposals… in: Gál Kinga: Minority Governance… 262–264.
17
Gyurcsík Iván: A szlovákiai magyar pártok karaktere és genezise. Regio (7) 1996. 3. 180. Ethnic Politics in Eastern Europe. A Guide to Nationality Policies, Organizations and Parties. The Center for Strategic and International Studies 1993. 340–346.
18
Tóth Károly: Kisebbségi önkormányzati törekvések Szlovákiában. Pro Minoritate (1) 1993. 6.; Szabadság és felelősség. A Magyar Polgári Párt programja. (H. n.) 1992. 67–97.
19
Pogány Erzsébet (ed.): Az Együttélés öt éve. Eseménynaptár és dokumentumgyűjtemény 1990– 1994. Pozsony (1995.) 244–247.; Az önkormányzat az önrendelkezés alapja. A szlovákiai magyar választott képviselők és polgármesterek országos nagygyűlésének hiteles jegyzőkönyve. Komárom 1994. január 8. Komárom, 1995.
20
Salat Levente: Autonómiák évadja, Krónika, 2004. január 11, www.erdelyma.hu ; Korhecz Tamás: Chances for Ethnic Autonomy in Vojvodina: Analysis of the Latest Autonomy Proposal of Hungarian Political Parties in Vojvodina, in: Gal Kinga (ed.): Minority Governance… 273–298; Dr. Gaál György–Bozóki Antal: A vajdasági magyarság és az autonómia, Újvidék, 2003.
21
Salat Levente: Autonómiák évadja…; Kántor Zoltán–Majtényi Balázs Autonómiamodellek Erdélyben – Jövőkép és stratégia, Magyar Kisebbség, 2004. 1.
22
Borsody, Stephen (ed.): The Hungarians: a divided nation. Yale Russian and East European publications, New Haven Yale Center for International And Area Studies, 1988; Baka András: József Eötvös, Oszkár Jászi. A history of minority Rights. 1850-1918. Közgazdasági és Jogi Publisher, Budapest, 1990.; Peter Vermeersch: EU Enlargement and Minority Rights Policies in Central Europe: Explaining Policy Shifts in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, Journal of Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe, 1. 2003. http://www.ecmi.de/jemie/download/ Focus1-2003_Vermeersch.pdf.
23
Vizi Balázs: Bevezető az Európai Konvent kisebbségvédelmi javaslataihoz. in: Kovács N.–Osváth A.–Szarka L. (ed.): Terep. Tanulmányok az etnicitás és az identitás kérdésköréről. Budapest, 2004. 315–323.
Begegnungen25_Sora
Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 25:203–204.
MIHAI SORA
rumänischer Bildungsminister (1990-92)
In wie weit betrachteten, bzw. betrachten Sie die Bewahrung der Minderheiten als Aufgabe der staatlichen Kulturpolitik, und welche Mittel standen, bzw. stehen Ihnen zu diesem Zweck zur Verfügung?
Ich bin der Meinung, dass es die Pflicht aller Staaten ist, die eigenen nationalen Minderheiten (sie könnten auch kulturelle Minderheiten genannt werden) zu schützen. Die Methode, die zum Schutz der Minderheiten am meisten geeignet ist, ist die Ausbildung eines Bildungssystems (von Grundschulen und Mittelschulen), das den Minderheiten ermöglicht, ihre Muttersprachen und nationale Kulturen zu bewahren und zu entwickeln. In einem solchen System müssen selbstverständlich alle Fächer in der Muttersprache unterrichtet werden. Daneben ist es auch erforderlich, dass die Sprache des jeweiligen Landes in ein paar Stunden pro Woche unterrichtet wird, da die Schüler diese Sprachkenntnis später bei ihrer Arbeit brauchen werden.
Welche Verfügungen haben Sie während Ihrer kulturpolitischen Tätigkeit zur Aufrechterhaltung der nationalen Minderheiten gefördert? Welche kulturpolitischen Aktionen wurden während Ihrer Amtszeit durchgeführt mit dem Ziel die Kultur der kleinen Nationen oder das Identitätsbewusstsein der nationalen Minderheiten innerhalb der Staatsgrenzen zu stärken?
In meiner Amtszeit als Bildungsminister meines Heimatlandes war, hatte ich gerade diese Zielsetzung. Ich sorgte dafür, dass die ungarische Minderheit, die in Rumänien zahlgemäß am bedeutendsten ist, am Grundstufen- und Mittelstufenunterricht teilnehmen kann. Den anderen sprachlichen Minderheiten war nur der Grundstufenunterricht gesichert.
Gibt es Ihrer Meinung nach einen bedeutenden Unterschied zwischen der Anwendung von kulturpolitischen Strategien bei großen, bzw. kleinen Nationen?
In 1939-48, d.h. zur Zeit der deutschen Besetzung und nach der „Befreiung” lebte ich in Frankreich. In Frankreich gab es zu dieser Zeit gar kein System zur Bewahrung der kulturellen Identität der Minderheiten, aber in Rumänien schon. In Temeswar, zum Beispiel, wo ich die Grundschule und Mittelsschule besucht hatte, gab es zweisprachige Gymnasien, wo man sowohl in Deutsch, als auch in Ungarisch Stunden haben konnte. (Der deutschsprachige Unterricht fand in dem Banatia Gymnasium statt, der Ungarische in dem Piaristengymnasium.)
Hat die politische Wende aus strategischer Sicht positiv auf die Aufrechterhaltung der kleinen Nationen eingewirkt?
Alle Länder, die sich in die Europäische Union integrieren wollen, streben danach, ihre Allgemeinpolitik, einschließlich der Bildungspolitik, mit den Erwartungen der EU in Einstimmung zu bringen. Ob diese Harmonisierungstendenz wirklich grundlegende Veränderungen mit sich bringt, oder ob es bloß eine „oberflächliche Anstrich” ist, kann ich nicht beurteilen, da ich wegen meines Alters nicht mehr so aktiv an dem politischen Leben meines Landes teilnehmen kann.
Was halten Sie über die oben angesprochenen Themenbereiche hinaus wichtig für die Förderung der kleinen Nationen?
Offenheit. Die Bereitschaft dazu, das Anderssein wirklich akzeptieren zu können. Die Ehrlichkeit der Beziehung zwischen „ich und den Anderen”. Der Dialog. Und natürlich der darausfolgende Vertrag (und die gegenseitige Einhaltung der festgelegten Verpflichtungen).
Begegnungen25_Somlyody-Simonffy
Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 25:127–145.
LÁSZLÓ SOMLYÓDY AND ZOLTÁN SIMONFFY
Water in Hungary: with Tradition and Unique Problems to the EU
Introduction
The present paper deals with water related issues in Hungary. First, it summarizes major, rather peculiar features of water resources management. Second, major fields of management are classified together with strategic drivers such as tradition, transition of the past fifteen years, changing concepts, EU accession, international dimensions and climate change. Third, future challenges are outlined. Within this we discuss a number of challenging problems. Most of them existed before, but in our changing world they require new answers. Examples include water availability and uses, water quality management and accidental pollution, public water services, extreme droughts, unusual floods and on how they can be sustainably treated by using advanced decision support systems, as well as the relation of water and agriculture. The paper is completed by thoughts on crucial issues of implementation of plans and strategies: financing, affordability and governance, as well as closing remarks.
Major features
Hungary is located in the deepest part of one of the closest basins of the Globe, the Carpathian basin (Figure 1). Two third of the country is lowland (84 % of the Hungarian territory is below the altitude of 200 m) and its climate is under strong continental influence which plays an important role in determining main meteorological and hydrological conditions.
Altogether twenty-four rivers bring water into the country from West, North and East and only three leave the country towards the South: the Danube, the Tisza and the Dráva. The entire country is in the river basin of the Danube.
From the viewpoint of water, Hungary is a country of extremes which leads to unique problems. This feature largely stems from geographic conditions outlined. Without the aim of completeness, major strategic features of water resources management can be summarized as follows:
– (a) The regularly inundated area due to floods (Figure 2.a) and the so-called excess waters (Figure 2.b) is large, about one third of the territory of the country. In the Hungarian Great Plains large area has no natural drainage.
– (b) There are areas–mostly in the East–which are seriously impacted not only by floods and excess waters (occurring mostly during winter and spring seasons), but draughts also form a prime concern (Figure 2c., 2.d). The problem is unique even in an international comparison.
– (c) Considering the long-term average inflow, Hungary is one of the richest countries in Europe: the head specific surface water resources amount to about 11 000 m3/cap/year. In contrast, the contribution within the country (600 m3/cap/year) is by far the smallest on the continent.
– (d) Thus, 95% of the surface waters are of foreign origin and only four medium-sized catchment areas are located within the boundaries of Hungary. Stemming from this feature, water quantity and quality basically depends on surrounding countries: efficient international collaboration in the Danube- and Carpathian Basins is a key element of water resources management in Hungary.
– (e) Water management is a difficult task in many areas, due mostly to the low density of the river system. Overall, the less developed East faces many more problems than the Western part of the country.
– (f) Due to hydrogeological conditions, groundwater is available throughout the country in sufficient quantity: it is the major source of drinking water supply. Confined aquifers and bank-filtered water resources are vulnerable to pollution and thus their protection has a high priority.
– (g) Public water supply has a nearly full coverage. However, due to non-sustainable past strategies, the development of sewerage and wastewater treatment is far beyond: the so-called “utility gap” (the difference of the ratio of population connected to public water supply and that one connected to the sewer system) is one of the largest in the continent.
– (h) Reconstruction needs of aged infrastructure are high. Also, a number of contamination problems were inherited from the past which should be properly treated.
– (i) The quality of water is poor in those rivers, which have low dilution capacity. Shallow lakes face the problem of eutrophication to varying degree. Groundwaters – depending on regions – are characterized by high concentrations of ammonium, iron, manganese and arsenic of geological origin. Many wetlands and terrestrial ecosystems in large areas also depend on groundwater.
– (j) Water management in the country basically depends on international factors. Hydrological conditions are likely to respond unfavourably to land use changes and to potential climate alterations. The territory of the country consists of shared catchments. The exposure and risk are high, and the relevant international agreements are not strong enough.
Strategic drivers
Water management was considered in the past mostly as a sequence of well-defined technical tasks. For today it became evident that it is not the case: integrated and sustainable management requires a broad scope and a strategic view. We list only a few of the reasons. First, water is a problematic media. It may be a resource, a public and an economic good, a risk factor, a national asset or a source of beauty, all at the same time. Second, water related objectives on various scales are often ambiguous and contradicting, and problem owners and users are rather diverse. Third, many different needs of the society, ecosystems, nature conservation and various sectors should be simultaneously fulfilled. Fourth, the future is unknown. Also, there are uncertainties of all sorts and thus there is a need for alternative strategic paths which can be adjusted according to the actual developments. These depend a lot on drivers which play a particularly important role for Hungary.
Figure 3 demonstrates a simplified classification of water resources management, its drivers and the interlinkages of the two. Major elements of management include demand management, water quality management, flood control and prevention, municipal water management and finally rural water management. The most important drivers are (i) tradition, (ii) transition of the past fifteen years, (iii) changing concepts, (iv) EU accession, (v) international dimensions and (vi) climate change. It is worthy to note that drivers cover a broad range of scales from local to global, fully in harmony with the very nature of water related issues.
In Figure 3 we also indicate the order of magnitude of investment costs associated to meet goals in various fields (see the last column). The implementation of plans depends a lot on the latter via phasing, financing and affordability. Finally, the role of governance is stressed: it is the single most important key of strategy implementation.
Next we offer a brief discussion on drivers.
Figure 3. Elements of water resources management and strategic drivers
Tradition and heritage
Hungary is a country of strong tradition in water management and its research. As an example, regulation of the two large rivers, Danube and Tisza (Figure 1), as well as their tributaries started more than 150 years ago. Regulation of the Tisza River was considered as the second conquest of the country and the established flood protection system has operated safely until the end of the 20th century (see later). Similarly, there have been broad experiences in irrigation, navigation, water supply and others. Due to the specific features of water management, the roots of river basin agencies were created already in the 19th century and they formally function for more than fifty years. It is worthy to note that today’s community based organizations (CBOs) already operated in the Tisza Valley in the 18th century.
Forty years of socialisms suggested the unbroken, uni-directional development of water management and did not really for alternative solutions. On the positive side pioneer master plans have been regularly prepared, but they assumed a guaranteed implementation by the state which then never has been the case. The politically influenced priorities led to non-sustainable actions between 195o and 1990 (see Box 1).
Some consequences of the unbalanced developments in the socialist era Box 1
• Utility gap lead to nitrate contamination and increasing levels of the groundwater under settlements.
• Irrational mining activities in the Transdanubian Mountains resulted in drastic decline of karstic water levels. Lots of springs and karstic wetlands have disappeared.
• Industrial activities based on outdated technologies of large residuals caused hot spots with highly contaminated soil and groundwater.
• Continued river regulation and the modification of runoff conditions at smaller scale involved disturbed ecological conditions in surface waters.
• The use of cheap agrochemicals is partially responsible for the high nutrient content of the surface waters resulting in eutrophication and in some places nitrate contamination of the groundwater.
• Maintenance of existing infrastructure was neglected and many developments were not completed (e.g. the regulation of the Danube and Tisza).
• Many environmentally degraded sites were created where remediation is needed.
• Interest and funding in research has been significantly reduced.
Transition
The past decade brought unique changes in the political, economic and social structure of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries including Hungary. The transition was associated with a strong privatization, the transfer of foreign capital, decentralization and institutional changes such that sometimes responsibilities remained without ownership.
The transformation of the economy and the scarcity of financial resources also influenced water management. Impacts appeared among others via emission reductions in various sectors, decrease of water consumption due to real pricing and others (see Box 2).
Features of the transition Box 2
• Too many and sometimes contradicting laws passed by the Parliament. Difficulties in developing new legislation.
• Negotiation with the EU.
• Dominance of short term goals. Lack of sufficient infrastructure maintenance. * Strengthening economy which is still very far from EU average. Affordability is a major issue.
• Collapse and structural changes of sectors (industry and agriculture) leading to significant reduction of emissions. Industry has recovered relatively quickly (foreign investments contributed significantly), while agriculture is still on an uncertain development path.
• On the positive side water quality of rivers has significantly improved due to emission reductions in industry and agriculture, as well as emissions of neighbour CEE countries.
• Real pricing led to about 50 % reduction of drinking water consumption and wastewater generation. Due to the latter concentrations of the raw wastewater became higher which then caused obvious problems in the operation of wastewater treatment plants. As contrasted to the frequent overload of the eighties now the hydraulic underload cause dilemmas in operation and design alike.
• Economic upturn and a relatively rapid renewal of industrial production resulted in growth of the GDP since 1995 which can lead to increasing emissions. Agriculture seems to show somewhat similar signs. The development of the economy plays a decisive role in water management since investment needs are enormous and the operational burden will grow.
• In the municipal sector investments never observed before took place. This was associated with shortcomings primarily due to lack of experiences in financing and management, and in setting subsidies.
• Public awareness is growing: people are increasingly willing to pay not only for water supply, but also for wastewater treatment and accession to healthy natural waters.
Changing concepts
It is often said that water is one of the key elements influencing development of the 21st century. The recognition is clearly reflected by the “Rio process”, many international efforts, the notion of sustainability and the related vast amount of publications produced during the past decade. In short, the philosophy and underlining concepts of water management have been changed a lot and the ongoing trend towards more integration is foreseen to be continued (see e.g. Somlyódy, 1995).
First, “protection” is replaced by prevention, meeting short-term demands replaced by seeking long term sustainable solutions, quantity approach replaced by an approach of stressing water quality, ecology and nature conservation. Water awareness is growing: it is becoming more and more appreciated from the viewpoint of the economy and society. Secondly, the obvious decline of traditional water engineering and integration of water management is mentioned. Integrating with land use management, environmental management and nature conservation, and finally with the economy and the society cannot be avoided. Thirdly, global and regional dependence is to be emphasized, which in the case of Hungary is especially important. Fourthly, an uncertainty of our “predictions” is of key importance.
In short, the re-thinking of water management is an unavoidable task. The joining of the European Union (EU) offers a unique opportunity in this respect: the system in transition may be easier adjusted to future needs. This is a key from the viewpoint of re-shaping the Hungarian water management.
EU accession
The process of the EU-accession has accelerated the transition in water management, by defining a number of rational actions that would be implemented anyway, but probably with a slower time schedule. Furthermore, it has brought new planning and monitoring concepts, new priorities and standards, some of them are definitely advantageous, others need adaptation and one can find those, which are difficult to implement.
One of the major issues of the integration procedure is the harmonization of the Hungarian legal system with the EU legislation. About twenty new EU harmonized legal instruments were introduced into practice thus significantly reducing the legislation gap which has serious economic consequences for the coming decade. One part of the decrees has entered into force new standards for water used for drinking, bathing and fishing, while other decrees and governmental programmes have been launched to control activities leading to pollution of waters, such as discharge of hazardous substances and urban wastewater, sludge disposals, use of pesticides and nitrate pollutions of agricultural origin.
The Water Framework Directive of the EU (EU WFD) is the future unified strategy of sustainable water resources management which came into force end of 2000. As an umbrella law it integrates earlier daughter directives. Its central objective is to ensure the good (ecological) status” of waters within 15 years. It defines basic ideas following changing concepts as discussed before and incorporate prevention, the principles of precaution, polluters’ pays, cost recovery by the users and public involvement. The European law basically influences water management practices in Hungary for the coming decades. Its implementation is a necessity which provides background to the preparation of the river basin management plan aiming at achievement of good status of the waters and the fulfilment of the requirements of basic directives mentioned above.
International relations
There are a number of frameworks for improved management of shared river basins: the EU water policy, the Helsinki Convention (protection of transboundary waters) and Danube Conventions, and its operational board, the International Committee for Protection of Danube River (ICPDR), as well as many bilateral agreements. The ICPDR has a strong co-coordinative role in the preparation of the River Basin Management Plan for the most international” Danube river basin (to which a considerable part of 13 countries belong). The straightening of the bilateral co-operation is an essential interest of Hungary being the most transboundary” country in the basin with eight neighbours. Although a number of joint programmes are going on, the main issue is still on how the results can lead to efficient integrated actions as a part of management plans of shared sub-basins, as well as on how these can be harmonised with local and regional actions driven by the EU WFD and ICPDR.
Climate change
Beside fundamental political, economical and social changes, alterations in the climate make even more difficult the set-up of new water management strategies. According to recent studies, the climate of Hungary will likely to be shifted to a more Mediterranean one with more frequent extreme events. This would result in reduction in surface runoff, in soil moisture and recharge to groundwater. One of the serious consequences is less water available for increased water demand, especially for irrigation. Winter floods may start earlier and lead to the increase of maximum flood levels. Water balance of lakes will be negatively affected. Retention times and salt contents may increase. The oxygen and nutrient household can also be adversely affected. Terrestrial ecosystems may alter toward drought resistant species. From a strategic viewpoint climate change’s likely impacts would be an additional, unpleasant element on already existing problems, primarily in the Tisza-valley, which has been already facing problems of water shortage. Therefore, the future should focus stronger on analyses of climate impacts under alternative scenarios, on flexible planning and the application of adoptive measures if postponement of actions would result in too high costs.
New answers to old problems
In this section we address a few important quantity and quality issues following Figure 3 to demonstrate the diversity of problems and challenges we face, and to give an impression on difficulties of the implementation. Many of these issues existed before, but they got a different interpretation and judgement due to changes in existing drivers or the appearance of new ones.
Water availability and uses
The total water abstraction at present is about 6000 million m3/year, 75 % of which is for cooling water use. Inside the remaining part public is the major user with 40 %, the industry takes a little more than one quarter and agriculture uses the rest (irrigation–15 %, an extremely low value, fishponds–5 % and animal breeding–15 %).
As noted, structural changes of industry and agriculture, and increasing pricing resulted in considerable decline of water uses, especially for surface waters. The modification of the demand structure, the limited surface water resources along small and medium water courses and the availability of aquifers with good permeability providing cheap local supplies for the water demand almost everywhere lead to the present situation, when 75 % of the total abstraction (except cooling water) is from groundwater. Beside the traditional dominance of groundwater in drinking water supply (94 %), abstraction of groundwater for industry and for irrigation has been gradually increasing, and nowadays it exceeds the amount used from surface water. This new situation may lead to non-sustainable exploitation to be properly handled when preparing river basin management plans according to the EU WFD. Although the use of groundwater on the country level is less than 50 % (see Box 3), but some karstic and porous aquifers in the East are already seriously overexploited.
Groundwater resources and the EU WFD Box 3
The available groundwater resources estimated according to the Water Framework Directive, i.e. considering water demand of the groundwater dependent ecosystems are about 250 million m3/year and 1450 m3/year from karstic and from porous aquifers, respectively. These values are significantly smaller than previous estimates not taking into account ecological criteria. In addition to these resources, rivers flowing in their gravel terraces can provide the so-called bank filtered water, which is much less sensitive to the ecological criteria. The estimated total capacity, primarily due to significant resources of the Danube is large; it is about 1800 million m3/year. Drinking water of the capital is fully served from this source.
Climate change would influence both, the supply and use side. A recent assessment has shown that the specific water demand for irrigation can increase by 20–50 %, while the surface runoff and recharge of groundwater in the south-eastern part of the country may be reduced by 30–60 % and 25–80 %, respectively.
In respect of the future, water demand is anticipated to remain more or less unchanged in industry and municipalities. The bottleneck is formed by the agricultural sector. Here many uncertainties are faced due to the existing, outdated irrigation system designed for earlier large scale state owned farms, the unavoidable shift from the present small plot structure to medium sized farms and impact of the EU accession. Irrigation demand will definitely grow, particularly in the Tisza valley where availability depends a lot on foreign uses and vulnerability to climate change impacts is high. The solution should be based on a number of hard and soft tools including pricing, planning with neighbour countries and the potential joint construction of reservoirs in upstream countries to cope with extreme events.
Water quality and accidental pollutions
According to a five-class water quality evaluation system, Hungary’s rivers show a medium quality (generally in the 2nd and 3rd class), after a significant improvement during the past 14 years. It is the result of changes in industry and agriculture, the construction of many wastewater treatment plants, as well as the increasing legislative pressure. The worst ranking is resulted in by microbiological classification due to the discharge of untreated sewage waters, while the best is demonstrated by oxygen budget and micropollutants. The latter fortunate situation shows the relatively small role of industrial emissions. Worst class water quality exclusively occurs in smaller rivers, which are recipients of untreated or only partially treated wastewaters.
Nowadays quality parameters sometimes start to show slightly increasing trends again, justifying rising production in industry and agriculture (the latter results in increasing diffuse source of pollution). For this reason, it is of crucial importance that the observed development of industry and the expected stabilisation of agriculture should not lead to increasing emission, which is an essential task of legislation. New concepts are to be introduced gradually. The implementation of the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive of the EU on the basis of the polluters pay principle will lead to the introduction of appropriate technologies. The cost of this development according to the best available is technology (BAT) is extremely high. Nitrate pollution from agricultural origin is controlled by separate decree aiming at introducing good agricultural practices.
Cyanide spill on the Tisza River Box 4
The ever observed largest water pollution accident of the region originated from a wastewater pond in Nagybánya (Romania) end of January, 2000. The application of poor and outdated technology and the exclusion of environmental legislation led to the spill of about 100 tons of highly toxic cyanide within half a day. The contamination reached via the River Szamos the Tisza-Danube system and caused a damage of the ecosystem never seen before. The cyanide spill was associated with that of heavy metals, primarily copper and zinc. The case was further complicated by snow melting, rainfall and a flood resulted in. Peak cyanide concentrations were higher by two orders of magnitude than internationally accepted standards. As a result about 1000 tonnes of fish was killed and the food chain was highly damaged. It was fortunate that cyanide remained in a complex, dissolved form. The same statement did not apply for other heavy metals which were partially deposited in the river bed and flood plain. They represent a risk on the long run. A number of court cases were launched. Until now none of them led to a resolution.
Surface water quality depends a lot on transboundary loads and accidental pollutions from upstream countries, and thus they play a crucial challenge when talking about national strategies. It is anticipated that the joint and simultaneous implementation of the EU WFD in individual countries and the collaboration in the frame of ICPDR will lead to an improved situation in the future, though the case of the striking cyanide spill on the Tisza River (Box 4) does not offer too much reasons to be optimistic.
Groundwater quality was already referred to. Problems of natural origin are due to the reducing conditions in the alluvium resulting in dissolved iron, manganese, ammonium and arsenic concentrations higher than the standards, particularly in porous aquifers. Karstic water and bank-filtered water show fewer problems, though they are rather vulnerable. The Hungarian register of point sources of pollution contains 15000 items, out of them almost 15 % represent real pollution. The legislation defines an immediate action if the pollution is above a certain acceptable limit and requires monitoring of all potential pollution sources otherwise by 2007. Beside serious pollution found in shallow groundwater in the vicinity of hot spot point sources, under settlements and some intensively cultivated agricultural area, relatively good qualitative conditions can be found elsewhere.
Hungarian legislation complying with the relevant EU-directive on groundwater protection was launched in 2000, controlling the pollution of the soil, too. The governmental decree does not give licence for new activity if risk of pollution of the groundwater arises, while in the case of already polluted area a multiphase investigation is required to determine the appropriate measures.
Public water services
Public water services including drinking water supply, sewage collection and disposal represent the closest daily contact between water and people. The present level of unbalanced infrastructure is shown in Figure 4. for various settlement clusters and the country as a whole, which together with EU directives specify at least two major tasks as follows:
– (a) As noted earlier, drinking water supply relies almost entirely on groundwater. The former Hungarian standards were less stringent for certain components than that of the EU. Compared to the new requirements, 75 % of the waterworks will need additional treatment (in terms of iron-, manganese-, ammonium-, organic material- and arsenic removal, or their combination). The most serious economic consequences stem from the high arsenic content in South and South-Eastern Hungary, which influences more than a million inhabitants in 400 settlements. Solution to this problem should be based on the usage of new water resources and the development of advanced water treatment with high arsenic removal (not without difficulties if other contaminants are also present). According to national plans all settlements have to be supplied with drinking water that meets relevant EU standards by 2009. The estimated investment cost is 600–800 million Euro.
– (b) To meet requirements of the Urban Wastewater Directive, a National Sewerage and Wastewater Treatment Program was established which incorporated a detailed scheduling till 2015. The plan is to solve wastewater management with tertiary treatment in settlements greater than 10000 population equivalent (PE) by 2009 and to have at least biological treatment in already existing treatment plants at the same time. This step would cover 85 % of all the discharges by spending only on 40 % of all the costs. The rest of settlements down to 2000 PE will be handled till 2015. The implementation will certainly necessitate actions stemming from specific Hungarian features. For instance, settlements in the region of sensitive lakes (e.g. Lake Balaton) should meet more stringent standards than that of the related EU directive. Another example is that sewerage and treatment will be required in settlements smaller than 2000 PE if they are impacting vulnerable groundwater. The estimated investment cost of the program is about 3 200 million Euro. Implementation plays a crucial role: saving possibilities are at least 20 %.
There are two additional areas where actions are very far from being obvious:
– (c) One of them is formed by small rural settlements (with low population density) where more than 30 % of the country’s population lives and the level of water service is very low (see Figure 4). Here, a number of questions should be addressed. Is expensive sewerage really the solution? Or rather, the focus should be on-site and “natural” treatment? How can it be ensured that such facilities are built and operated safely? Is there a way to motivate people to apply alternative solutions of ecosanitation focusing on closing water and material cycles on the household level, as well as re-use and re-cycling? Or is it too early?
– (d) The second cluster of tasks stem from the lack of legislation and/or appropriate programme of measures. Here we can list among others sludge treatment which is frequently inadequate, the development of urban storm water runoff systems, restoration of drinking water distribution networks of high losses, as well as aged sewer systems.
Extreme droughts
We already have had many negative experiences in draught conditions and their consequences. Droughts of several years have appeared in the past, the last one between 1983 and 1994. The recent dry period started in 2000 suggesting that the return time is shorter than in the past. It is not yet clear whether we are facing a trend influenced by climate change or events still belong to natural climate variability.
Terrestrial ecosystems of lowlands and shallow lakes are particularly sensitive to droughts, when the inflow does not cover the evaporation and the continuously decreasing water level can cause “irreversible” changes in the ecosystems. Whatever the cause, the changes can reach such an extent that water management should deal with the problem. Compared to historical droughts, when the anthropogenic pressure was small, nowadays human activities significantly worsen the impact. According to the EU Water Framework Directive measure to mitigate adverse impacts of droughts should be part of the planning. The main conclusion of recent studies is however, that instead of applying different water transfers, adaptation of water uses to the water regime should be preferred (Box 5).
The “Hungarian Sea”: Lake Balaton Box 5
Lake Balaton is the largest standing water body in Central Europe, one of the most significant shallow lakes with a water level regulated by a control gate, the most important recreational site in Hungary, a national asset. The lake faced the problem of eutrophication which was properly handled by reducing phosphorus loads by about 50 % leading to a low tropic status similar to that of the early seventies. However, severe water shortage has been experienced during the past four years causing water level drop by about half a meter. Unpleasant consequences incorporated degradation of beaches, proliferation of macrophytes and attached algae in the near shore zone and difficult uses of harbours by sailing boats. It was felt that transfer of water from another watershed is a must. A comprehensive assessment drew conclusions as follows (Somlyódy and Honti, 2004):
• The present ecological status of the lake is good and does not justify any interventions, independently whether we consider the open water or the shoreline region.
• Large water level fluctuation due to natural variability in rainfall, runoff and evaporation was typical also in the past. However, long run average water balance of the lake is positive and thus the water level will be rehabilitated.
• By using meteorological and hydrological data no climate change impacts could be justified.
• The hydrologic generator developed on the basis of observations for the past hundred years, water level recovery needs a time period between four months and three years. The lake will be filled up even if climate change impact is twice as large as assumed by climatologists.
• The present extreme event occurs say once in two hundred years. If climate change is assumed, this may happen once in about thirty years.
• Water transfer may seem to be a favourable idea to prevent future negative changes. However, the detailed assessment has shown that it would result in only ecological risks (change of the chemical composition of the lake’s water, increase of the external and internal nutrient loads, enhanced algal growth, proliferation of invasive species etc.) and no benefits. Thus, it is wiser of not interfering and to adjust our needs to the lake.
• Measures recommended incorporate to dredge harbours and selected beaches, and the removal of unpleasant macrophytes. Additionally it is proposed to increase the capacity of the single outflow, the Sió Canal which would allow storing more water in the lake without flood risks, if once filling up already took place. This would allow to lift lowest water levels by about 20 cm. It is noted that the behaviour of the lake led to a success story: the last eighteen months resulted in a filling up which happened a little faster than the mean scenario.
Extreme floods: sustainable control and advanced tools
About one quarter of the country is exposed to floods, which is exceptional in Europe (Figure 2.a). Flood dykes of 4200 km length protect 700 settlements, 2.5 million people, 2000 industrial plants and indirectly about 30% of the GDP. Flood protection has been successful in the past, but recently the Tisza Basin has exhibited new signs of increasing risks: peak flood levels show a clearly increasing trend. Reasons are manifold: primarily impacts of land uses changes primarily in upstream countries and climate alterations are speculated to which siltation of the flood plain bed should be added. On the basis of hydrological and hydraulic analyses further increases in peak water level are anticipated which could hardly be tolerated by the existing protection system.
The raising of existing levees and dykes
would not lead to a sustainable solution. It was felt that the supervision of the existing plan is needed and new measures should be introduced. A program was launched for improving flood control along the Tisza River and was named as the “New Vásárhelyi Plan” after the famous Hungarian civil engineer who was the principal investigator of the river regulation 150 years ago. Basic elements of the plan are the establishment of emergency reservoirs of a total volume of 1500 million m3 and cleaning up the flood plain also including the creation of conveyance corridors.
As a basis of planning ARES 1.0, an advanced flood control decision support system (DSS) was used (BME, 2003). This has sophisticated hydrologic and hydraulic components which are able to compute rainfall-runoff on the watershed and river beds alike as well as soil moisture changes. It also has a hydrologic generator allowing to analyse not only historical extreme events but also likely future ones. It incorporates an optimization routine which can be employed to define the optimal reservoir setting to achieve the largest peak level reduction. It can handle scenarios for climate- and land use changes. As input, the model system uses among others a topographic model, satellite images for land use pattern and radar observations to describe spatial variations in precipitation. The DSS can handle the entire Tisza Basin of about 160 000 km2 extension, including all the upstream countries.
In the frame of the first phase of the project six reservoirs have been identified considering also needs of rural and agricultural development, nature conservation, landscape management, as well as ecological and social implications. At the same time, the entire effort is put into the framework of a basin wide international collaboration by recognising that flood control and prevention should be considered as a part of the security policy of Hungary.
Water and agriculture
Once upon a time Hungary was an agricultural country where water played an extremely important role. For today the situation has changed: agriculture became a small sector representing not more than 5 % of the GDP. Still many problems remained open. Structural changes have not yet been finished and it strongly depends on the EU policy. It is likely that arable land will decrease. The intensively and extensively cultivated areas will be further rearranged and the nature conservation areas will grow. The future challenge of water management is on how it can participate in the development of an integrated land use management policy considering also welfare conditions and the status of rural settlements. This should consider a number of issues we already touched upon: seasonal inundation of flatlands (excess water) primarily in the Tisza Basin and its drainage system of a huge capacity (about 800 m3/s), drought and the existing irrigation system (irrigable area amounts to approximately 300 000 hectare, but out of that only 20% is irrigated at present) and floods discussed earlier (see Figure 2.d for areas negatively impacted by all three extreme phenomena).
From the figure it is obvious that in the future a sustainable strategy is needed. Excess waters–instead of transporting out from the catchment by drainage systems–can be collected in local reservoirs or artificially infiltrated into the groundwater and in summer this stored water can be abstracted for irrigation purposes. This solution would be in harmony with the intention for restoring the natural water conditions. The system is mosaic-like; the application needs appropriate adaptation of the land use, which is facilitated by the actual situation of transition. Lands excluded from the cultivation will likely show important overlap with the areas seriously endangered by excess waters, since the regularly occurring damages will trigger via market conditions the modification of the land use.
Irrigation will be part of the technology in the intensively cultivated areas, which will unlikely coincide with the existing irrigation infrastructure. Attached to the ongoing structural changes, new, more suitable areas can be selected for cultivation where water is available safely and economically, and soil moisture conditions in the root zone are favourably. In intensively cultivated areas the importance of non-point source control will grow (the Lake Balaton region is an example) which will require to launch agricultural-environmental management programs with the active participation of farmers.
Governance and implementation
Economic aspects and affordability play an important role in implementing plans (see Figure 3). The first phase of the implementation of EU water policy until the end of 2009 consists of programmes for eliminating major gaps in pollution control and public water infrastructure. The estimated cost is about 3000 million Euros. In that phase cost-effectiveness is the major driver. Even if financing can be done successfully and cleverly, more than 1 % of head specific GDP and about 4 % of the net income should be spent, which is significantly higher than in EU member countries at present.
Costs of the second and third phases (by 2015 and 2027, respectively) in implementing the EU WFD can be less accurately estimated. As important tasks the realization of the program of measures determined by the first river basin management plans and the elimination of gaps in meeting environmental objectives should be mentioned. The financial needs will remain approximately unchanged, however at least two difficulties should be envisaged: (i) the support from EU will likely be reduced and (ii) the introduction of the cost recovery principle in the water services by 2010 will cause additional affordability problems.
As noted before governance is the single most important factor to implement our comprehensive plans. Governance in a broad sense includes the legal, administrative, institutional and financial system alike. The legal harmonisation and the related administrative re-adjustments are almost finished; however considerable fine-tuning is needed at regional levels in order to clarify the still existing overlapping. As demonstrated in Box 6, the administration which went through a number of changes during the past two decades is rather sophisticated and its functioning may not be without problems and conflicts.
Administration Box 6
Ministry of Environment and Water Management governs the state administration for environmental protection, nature conservation and water management. This Ministry is responsible for the implementation of the Water EU Directive. For this purpose an Interministerial Board was set-up. Organization consists of the National Chief Directorate of Environment, Nature Conservation and Water (dealing with technical tasks) and the National Environmental and Water Chief Inspectorate (dealing with legal control and related administration). At the regional level there are similar institutions in 12 regions, with the difference, that the licensing from environmental and water point of view is at separate institutions and 10 National Park Directorates are responsible for nature conservation. The National Chief Directorate of Environment, Nature Conservation and Water and their regional organizations will be responsible for the preparation of the River Basin Management Plans. Regional Water Management Councils are established for coordination and consultancy of water management tasks of regional importance. Their role will certainly increase in decision making related to the approval of River Basin Management Plans. For managing state and municipal tasks, stakeholders might establish associations fulfilling important roles amongst public, productive sectors and water management.
Water and major water structures are owned by the state and municipalities. Private ownership is marginal. The municipalities’ property consists mainly of infrastructure in public water services. The success of water management in the settlements depends on the governance system at that level. The transition period has produced many changes which led to unclear situations. Examples include responsibility and ownership without real power, lack of resources, professional knowledge and clear development plans, unclear setting in financing, abuse of subsidies and others.
Development of governance and institutions are crucial. In contrast to technical measures, it does not need serious financial backgrounds. However, it requires – particularly at the present transition phase – capacity building and the creation of advanced institutional culture. It requires continuous education and permanent learning from our own mistakes to improve conditions of future decision making. It also necessitates a much better job in public participation than in the past.
Closing remarks
Hungary’s water management is characterized by tradition, knowledge and unique future problems. This is what we bring in the European Union. In turn, the implementation of the new EU water policy simultaneously with all the other EU countries is a unique opportunity. It will determine our water management for the coming 25 years. It will offer a systematic framework with well-defined deadlines and hopefully will lead to improved implementation. It will ensure conditions for exchanging experiences. This is important since the realization of the EU WFD obviously has never been done and it is still a task in front of not only Hungary, but all the Member States. And finally the EU accession will guarantee funding without which we can not execute our plans: our economy is not strong enough. Challenges are huge. The opportunity is there. The rest depends on us.
References
BME (2003) Scientific bases of improving flood control and prevention in the Tisza Basin. The New Vásárhelyi Plan (manuscript in Hungarian), Department of Sanitary and Environmental Engineering, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest
Somlyódy, L. (1995) Water Quality Management: Can We Improve Integration to Face Future Problems? Water Science and Technology, Vol. 31., No. 8
Somlyódy, L. ed (2002) Strategic issues of the Hungarian water resources management (in Hungarian), Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest
Somlyódy, L. and Honti, M. (2005) Water transfer to Lake Balaton: to act or not to act? Water Science and Technology (in press)
Begegnungen25_Sarkozy
Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 25:31–40.
TAMÁS SÁRKÖZY
The Law of the Institutional System of Market Economy in Hungary and the European Union
It is primarily economic law that is supposed to reflect the law of the institutional system of market economy, which can be called trade law by a somewhat dated expression. This sphere includes the status rights of business organisations, meaning primarily the law on economic (commercial) associations, including the law on co-operatives, and the law on concerns and company procedures and registration that has evolved in the second part of the 20th century. Law on bankruptcy (the law on insolvency), on securities and the stock exchange, on banking and insurance, and on competition also belong to this group, and the institutional system of the law on consumer protection and advertising is also included in the latter one. Finally, this sphere covers the law on commercial transactions and economic contracts, on industrial protection and the law on intellectual property in general, the latter one increasingly comprising the law related to information revolution (law on the internet, etc.).
The topic defined in the title can be approached from two sides, from the economic law of the European Union and from that of Hungary acceding to the Union.
The “economic law” of the Union
As far as the European Union is concerned, the Community has not come forward with the claim of developing a uniform economic law, extending over everything, above the economic law of the Member States, making them void, ever since the Treaty of Rome. In keeping with its liberal economic policy, the Union has been satisfied with:
a) Building supranational institutions in some key areas. An institution of this kind was the European Economic Interest Grouping approved in 1985, as a legal entity of coordination and co-operation, the European Company approved in 2001, which is in fact a European Company Incorporated, and the European Cooperative Society, approved in 2003. They are supranational associations, directly regulated by the Union (as far as its content is concerned this regulation is directly operational in the Member States, it only has to be technically incorporated into the countries’ law), and such associations can be set up if legal subjects of at least two Member States found them, or participate in them;
b) The European Union tries to orient the legislation of Member States also in key areas, primarily in the field of big business (major companies incorporated, stock exchanges, banks, insurance companies, etc.) by guidelines, they have to be aligned to and approximated. For instance, the most important data of the companies incorporated that are operating publicly, in keeping with the No. 1 Union company-law guideline – that is the guideline of publicity – have to be made public in an authorised registration, which, in a broad sense, is a guideline for the protection of consumers and investments. The Union, however, does not regulate whether this public registration is kept by public-law chambers (as in France), or by the administrative judiciary (as in Austria or in Germany), and it allows for the assertion of national legal tradition.
The guidelines therefore need not be copied word by word; they have to be adapted meaningfully by national law. The No. 2 guideline on company law, that has enhanced requirements for the safety of capital in the publicly operating companies incorporated, let us say, regarding their own shares or rapport, was included into the Polish, Czech, or Hungarian (Act XLIX of 2003) legislation, into the national company law by different techniques prior to accession, and this was a correct procedure, no uniformity is expedient. Union legal alignment therefore does not wear away national laws and does not violate national legal traditions. It is all the more impossible since the Union guidelines pertain only to a rather small segment of economic life, and do not require relatively uniform regulation in the field of the so-called big business. Remaining with the example of company law, the Union does not have a guideline, let alone any regulation for individual enterprises, for unlimited partnerships or deposit companies, and there is only a single guideline that can be identified for companies limited (Company Law Guideline No. 12, regulating the single-member companies). One may say that the Union wishes to encourage the Member States by the European Charter for small companies to dismantle obstacles in the way of micro- and small enterprises so as to grant them access to the market, but the European Union does not at all regulate individual and company small enterprises and it exclusively deals with the publicly (on the stock exchange) operating large companies incorporated.
Due to this attitude no development of a uniform European economic law can be expected within a foreseeable future. There are differences of a certain extent among the stylistic elements of the economic law of countries belonging to the British, Scandinavian, French and German types of law, thus uniformity would simply be impossible to achieve. The acceptance of the European company incorporated was only possible because the Union regulation equally allowed for the implementation of the uniform management of the British Board-type as well as the German divided managerial system (Dreiecksystem – Vorstand, Aufsichtsrat, Buchprüfer) for the associates. Hungarian economic law belongs to the group of German law, and essentially we have to stay within this framework in the future too.
At the same time, and this is primarily valid for the acceding former socialist countries, the legitimacy criterion of market economy is asserted in the Union; in other words, the Member States have to have the basic carrier laws of a market economy. Therefore a former socialist country can become a Member State of the Union only if privatisation progresses to an extent that private ownership acquires a decisive majority in the ownership structure of the given country. Further on, the economy of the Member States has to be an economy with law on competition that ensures the four basic Union freedoms, the free flow of goods, capital, services and people. Essentially this is what is studied by the White Papers of the Union in relation to the readiness of the acceding countries. In Hungary privatisation began with the 1988 Company Act, prior to the system, change and massive privatisation was essentially completed by 1998; our first Act on competition was passed in 1990. Thus we have met the criteria of legitimacy much before accession.
Two mistakes may be made when the legal requirements of the Union are realised:
a) One of them is delay in the adoption of European legal institutions promoting modernisation. A case in this line is the state block of shares, always running counter to the principles of our company law which was introduced into Hungarian company law by the modification of the Act on privatisation in 1997, and we were ready to repeal only moments before our accession to the Union, under pressure by the Union, but with legal regulations that try to smuggle back as much as possible of the additional rights of the state. This is, however, wrong. If the state may operate commercial companies, it cannot exercise additional shareholders’ rights by law, not even in the case of the privatised former state-owned ones.
b) The other one is unjustified running forward. For instance, the publicity guideline of the Union is valid only for companies incorporated that operate publicly, but we have already excluded those sheltered companies from the Hungarian company law in the mid-90s that still continue to operate in Austria or Germany undisturbed. Or, though no Union act whatsoever obliged us to do so, yet, as contrasted to German law, we introduced the penal responsibility of legal entities three years ago, and this institution is profoundly alien to the Hungarian legal setup and presumably it would be inoperative.
The task is to remain on the middle road, and to preserve the positive elements of the traditions of Hungarian economic law, while we adapt the law of the European Union, at the same time modernising our own, for only this can develop Hungarian economic law. Lessons may be learned from the law of the other Member States, too, naturally taking over only those legal elements that can be organically incorporated into our set of institutions. For instance, though there were doubts, yet we incorporated the procedure of public take-over of companies based on the British City Code, into the Hungarian company law in 1996. Therefore currently our company law allows for the parallel operation of the German-type law on concerns for the companies incorporated that function as closed ones, as well as the law on taking over companies that apply to publicly operating (on the stock exchange) companies incorporated that are regulated by the Act on the capital market. At present these legal areas of different outlook exist side by side each other, and the future will show whether their organic merger would succeed.
The incorporation of the economic legal institutions of the European Union into Hungarian law raises two more problems:
a) Our technical underdevelopment, the lack of economic strength. For instance, we would like to have an early introduction of electronic company procedure, but we are unable to proceed faster without the financial and technical assistance of the European Union.
b) The protection of our national interests deriving from our economic condition. For instance, we are lagging behind legal alignment in agricultural economy. Its reason, however, was the protection of Hungarian agriculture as long as it was possible. There are separate interests of Member States in the Union, every state would protect them and if we do the same, one should not be ashamed of it. All this, however, cannot question our commitment to the Union.
The condition of Hungarian economic law
Historical factors
Regarding Hungarian economic law, as in the case of every institution, for the proper assessment of the present situation the historical aspect of development plays a significant role when the situation is being assessed, since law has an element of stability, tradition has always been of fundamental importance in legal development.
a) As far as the stylistic features of the Hungarian economic law are concerned, it belongs to German commercial law, and it did not lag in anything behind the Austrian law in its state of development, taken as an example, prior to 1945. The 1875 Code of Commerce summarised the legal corpus that had a continuous development up to World War II. In 1930, for instance, we incorporated the limited company into our law, single-member companies could be founded, and the institution of co-operatives was strong. Parallel to company law the law on competition was fully regulated (unfair acts of competition + cartel law), we acceded to the European international agreements related to intellectual property (copyright, protection of industrial rights). In Hungary a comprehensive commercial legal culture also evolved with the help of the implementation of law and legal literature, and it facilitated full return to the market economy after 1990.
b) “Naturally” the Soviet-type law of the command economy was adopted in Hungary, too, after 1945. At the same time it has to be said that the “classical Soviet model” was asserted for a short period of time, essentially between 1949 and 1959, and compared only moderately to the Soviet Union; the Commercial Code was not repelled (though it was not implemented), nationalisation did not extend over arable land, and company and civic rights were from the very beginning less restricted right than in the Soviet Union.
c) The disintegration of the law of the classical socialist command economy essentially began with the Civil Code of 1959. The openness of that Code is indicated by the fact that it is still in force, though with several modifications, and it has proved to be useable even after the change of the system. The Hungarian system, based on the Civil Code, has been developing subsequently on monist bases as well: the civic legal institutions of commercial law, and the commercial contracts in particular have been incorporated into the Civil Code and remain there to this day, and though company law, co-operative law, and the law of intellectual products have been regulated by separate Acts, they are linked to the Civil Code as a base. In the decade between 1960 and 1970 the administrative laws of the Hungarian economy were also born besides the Civil Code (Acts on building, water management, mines, and railways). Thus Hungary has never been characterised by the nihilism of Soviet law or that of the Balkan, the economy had been functioning on legal basis even during the decades of socialism.
d) The ‘goulash communism’ and ‘soft dictatorship’ character of the Kádár system unfolded fully after the economic reform of 1968. That reform wished to create a so-called socialist market economy, based on the autonomy of state-owned companies and co-operatives. The relative independence of state-owned companies from public administration was stipulated by Act VI of 1977 on State-Owned Companies, and the autonomy of co-operatives was guaranteed by Act I of 1971 on Co-operatives, and company autonomy became complete by the creation of the self-governing (company council, general assembly, assembly of delegates) type of state-owned companies. Act VII of 1972 on Planning the people’s economy ended the compulsory plan indices, and Act IV of 1977 deleted the institution of plan contract from the Civil Code, whereas Act III of 1974 established the direct authorisation of companies to foreign trade. The latter Act terminated the isolation of Hungarian companies from world trade. Inter-company legal disputes were transferred from arbitration committees of the nature of public administration to the judiciary.
In this quarter, or half of a market economy (neither plan nor market – as the famous formula of Tamás Bauer defined it) the institutions of company and competition law quietly and slowly evolved (revolved). After the first attempts of 1967 Law No. 4 of 1978 regulated the economic associations of state-owned companies and co-operatives (we used the term association instead of company due to ideological considerations), two of which, the joint venture and the merger survived after the change of the system, too. The possibility of joint ventures with Western companies was open to the Hungarian economic organisations since 1972. At the turn of the 1970s and 1980s citizens’ right to association was added to it, once again revived under cover due to ideological reasons, and obtained the form of various economic groupings, civic rights associations, small co-operatives, professional panels, etc. The partial new regulation of the 1967 Law on Competition was placed on a legal basis by Act IV of 1984 on the prohibition of unfair economic activity.
Summing up this curious course of development it can be stated that the development of Hungarian law did not prove the possibility of some kind of a third way of socialist market economy, different from the Soviet model (as it was thought of by the Polish Brus, the Czechoslovak Ota Sik, or the Hungarian Rezső Nyers), but even if in a subdued manner and lopsidedly yet the institutions of market economy did operate under legal regulation in socialist Hungary, too, and it significantly facilitated transfer to the bourgeois market economy in the process of system change when its international conditions became ripe by the 90s. In Hungary one may speak also about the evolution of a state quasi based on the rule of law for economics, as a result of legal regulation and of the relatively independent juridical law enforcement, despite the party state and the one-party system. Two decisive developments resulted from it in view of the Hungarian institutions of market economy. On the one hand, the shift to a bourgeois market economy could take place two years before the change of the political system in the Hungarian law on economics, with Act VI of 1988 on economic associations, even on the ruins of the collapsing socialist society, and on the other hand, as contrasted to the majority of the former socialist countries (mostly to the successor states of the Soviet Union, and the former socialist states of the Balkan), the development of Hungarian economic law could be an evaluative one, it could be built on the antecedents, it did not mean a revolutionary change, and gradual development could ensue in economic law.
The advantage of Hungarian economic law derived from advantages in time and continuity as against several of our neighbours: the basic carrier laws of the market economy were passed between 1988 and 1995 in Hungary, more over, their first revision could be conducted on the basis of practical experience prior to our accession to the Union. These Acts were made already in the process of European legal alignment; a basic requirement was to adjust to the European legal principles and to the Union directives already from the late 80s on. In addition, the Hungarian Acts on the economy did not remain only on paper, and during the fifteen years since 1988 the implementation of law could relatively adjust itself to the not at all minor change that it was not supposed to realise semi-market requirements based on majority social ownership suppressed by ideological reasons, but a real bourgeois competitive market economy has been in operation, dominated by private ownership and open to the global world trade, and that too in observance of the requirements of the economic constitutionality of a real civic state based on the rule of law.
The basic Euro-conform Acts of the market economy in Hungary
The basic Acts of the civic market economy of the system change were made between 1988 and 1995 in Hungary, in two waves.
The first wave took place between 1988 and 1991. First of all Act VI of 1988 on economic associations was passed, setting out irreversible processes towards Hungarian capitalism and a new and specific original accumulation of capital. The Act on transformation (Act XIII of 1989) was added to it, allowing for the transition of the former socialist organisational formations to commercial companies; the Act XXIV of 1988 on foreigners’ investments, and legal Order No. 23 of 1989 regulated company procedure (the right of public administration to supervise companies was abolished at that time and juridical company procedure was introduced); next came Act V of 1990 on individual enterprises, the first Act on securities and the stock exchange, that is Act VI of 1990 (as a result the stock exchange started to operate in Budapest in the spring of 1990), and the first Act on competition, Act LXXXVI of 1990, prohibiting unfair market behaviour.
The second wave took place between 1991 and 1995. On the one hand basic fiscal laws (Act XVIII of 1991 on accounting, Act IL of 1991 on bankruptcy, liquidation and final settlement procedures, Act XXXVIII of 1992 on the state fiscal administration, the Acts on banks such as Act LXIX of 1991 and Act XV of 1991 on the bank of issue, finally Act LXIII of 1991 on investment funds) were passed. Special attention should be accorded to the 1991 Act on accounting that introduced Western principles of accountancy without which massive privatisation (difficulties of assessing assets) could not have been implemented. On the other hand, basic laws on status were passed, such as Acts LII–LIV and LV on the forced transformation of state-owned companies into economic associations, and subsequently Act XXXIX of 1995 on privatisation was passed with the help of which massive institutional privatisation was implemented in Hungary and the proportion of private ownership reached 85% of the national assets. An important ‘organisational’ piece of legislation was Act I of 1992 on the transformation of co-operatives into commercial companies, and Act XXII of 1992, the Labour Code of a new market nature that summarised the law of individual labour contracts as well as collective labour law and the collective contract (the Hungarian law on strikes was passed as early as 1989).
The primary codification of the basic laws related to market economy was completed around 1995. Subsequently three basic legislative processes began in Hungary.
1. The revision and new codification of the basic laws of the market economy on the basis of the requirements of European legal alignment and practical experiences in every 6 to 8 years, that is also aimed at the unity of the legal system of the economy, at the elimination of contradictions among Acts passed at different points in time, and of the technical mistakes committed during the legislative rush (the main aim of legal policy became to accord priority to qualitative legislation instead of the quantitative one). This happens for instance, in law on competition: a new Act LVII of 1996 was passed to replace the one of 1990, and yet another novella, the Act CXXXVIII of 2000. The repeated codification for economic associations together with company law was done by Acts CXLIV and CXLV of 1997. A further modernisation of association and company law is envisaged for the end of 2005. A similar modernisation by phases took place in the law on securities and stock exchange by Act CXI of 1996 and by Act CXX of 2001 respectively, containing the uniform legal regulation of the capital market, also in the law on insurance (Act XCVI of 1995, and Act LX of 2003), or in the law on accounting (Act C of 2000).
2. The tendency, beginning in the middle of the 90s, was the process of supplementing the basic Acts on market economy with the so-called secondary (special branches, etc.) legislation which was more or less completed by the early 2000s (Acts on the railways, mines, water management, postal services, telecommunications, and then, in 2003 Acts on communications, electrical energy, fishing, plant protection, waste management, etc.). Laws containing technical progress, such as the new requirements of the information society belong to this legislation, such as Act XXXV of 2001 on electronic signing, Act CVIII of 2001 on electronic trade. The law on intellectual work was also newly codified: in 1995 the law on inventions, in 1999 on copyrights, and in 1997 the law on trademarks were modernised, the commercial advertisements were regulated by Act LVIII of 1997, and the commercial media by Act I of 1996. Act CLV of 1997 on consumer protection was expressly the result of European Union requirements, together with Act CXVIII of 2000 on commercial agents, or Act XXXIV of 1998 on risk capital investments.
3. Legislation ensuring the infrastructure of the fundamental laws of the market economy was also practically completed. The following Acts, among others, fall under this category: Act X of 1993 on responsibility for products, the evolution of the law on public procurement (its first legal regulation was contained in Act XL of 1995), or Act VI of 1993 on the order of the agricultural market and the law on statistics (Act XLVI of 1993); on the other hand there was the Act XLI of 1991 on public notaries, Act XI of 1998 on lawyers, Act LV of 1997 on auditing activities, or the law on arbitral tribunals (Act LXXI of 1994), or legislation on the economic chambers (Act XVI of 1994, Act CXXI of 1999). In fact the Hungarian laws on customs and currency that underwent profound deregulation because of our accession to the Union, the legal regulation of non-profit organisations (Act CLVI of 1997), and the social law (Act III of 1993), the law on labour safety (Act XCII of 1993), and the law on environmental protection (Act LIII of 1995) should also be considered as pieces of infrastructural legislation.
As a result of the joint effects of these three processes it can be stated that the legislative establishment of the legal institutes of market economy was completed in Hungary before its accession to the Union. This legal material is aligned to the acquis, and our economic law corresponds to the average of the level of legal technology of the fifteen Member States, and it belongs to the most advanced ones, together with the Czech and Polish laws, among the ten countries acceding.
The following areas are still deficient in legislation:
a) A new and modern regulation of commercial contracts. This is going to be the task of the new Hungarian Civil Code the preparation of which has been in progress since 1998, and the concept of which was approved in early 2003. Presumably the new Hungarian Civil Code, replacing Act IV of 1959, would be submitted to parliament in the governmental term of 2006 to 2010, and will comprehensively regulate the rights of individuals, ownership rights, treaties, family law and that of inheritance, taking in consideration the more recent European legal development. In keeping with the monist view, no new Commercial Code would be drawn up besides the Civil Code, for the legal institutes of commerce would be linked to the Civil Code.
b) A new law on state fiscal administration would replace the outdated Act of 1992, and the new one would establish the modern legal status of public property and the budgetary organs handling it, including the establishment of a modern state treasury (fiscals) that has so far not come into being.
c) The restoration of the Austro-Hungarian system of cadastral land register, operating under juridical supervision, after the anomalies of the current system of property registration are eliminated, naturally with the utilisation of the achievements of technical modernisation. (The relatively unsettled legal status of property is a serious hindrance to investment in Hungary.)
d) As contrasted to the highly developed law on companies, the consolidation of co-operative law failed, basically because of political reasons. Currently two laws on co-operatives of different concept are in force, which is contradictory in itself (Act I of 1992, and Act XCLI of 2000). Hopefully the Union order on European co-operatives, vigorously approximating co-operatives to companies incorporated, would make it clear in Hungary too that modern co-operatives are not social non-profit forms approximating associations, but specific commercial companies, and a uniform and modern law on co-operatives may be born in Hungary at last.
e) So far sharp political party struggles have hindered the creation of a new Constitution in Hungary, and constitutionality has been basically developed by the practice of the Constitutional Court after 1990. This, however, is not without contradictions. It would be the task of a new Constitution to unfold the principles of economic constitutionality, such as the protection of ownership, of competition, etc., which is a rather backward area of the current Constitution.
f) The establishment of the law of the system change has inevitably caused over-regulation in economic life. Therefore deregulation is a basic task, unjustified state intervention should be stopped, the economic laws should be vigorously depoliticised, the still existing administrative obstacles to the entrepreneurs wishing to enter the market should be dismantled, and the cost burden on entrepreneurs should be mitigated.
The centre of gravity should now be shifted from economic legislation increasingly to the implementation of economic law. It is understandable that the internalisation of new laws, and particularly the new market-economy outlook required time for the judiciary, for the lawyers, etc. For the time being legal practice is uncertain and slow, but, for instance, in company lawsuits as well as in cases of liquidation adequate routine is evolving, and practice in concern and cartel law is being consolidated as well. A new stratum of lawyers, specialising in commercial cases has emerged, private notaries and auditing companies have appeared, and proceedings of distaining have been modernised. Slowly the personal and objective bases of special economic jurisdiction are being created, and the Hungarian companies are also increasingly availing themselves of the opportunities of arbitral tribunals; the authenticity of company registration has greatly improved. Periodicals specialising in economic law have been established, and the culture of a modern economic law is on the spread. There is every hope, therefore, for catching up with the West in the field of economic law within one or two decades, and to eliminate the disadvantage caused by almost half a century after World War II.
After a forced interval between 1998 and 2002, the Courts of Appeal were established in 2003. Thus the Supreme Court, relieved of concrete cases, has a better opportunity to ensure the uniformity of economic legal practice by its decisions on legal unity. This way legal uncertainty, fundamentally affecting business risk, can be significantly reduced. The preparation of judges for the adoption of the legal practice of the European Court has been in progress for years, but the relative lack of the knowledge of foreign languages is a significant drawback in this circle. Obviously some time is needed to the Hungarian law courts to become able to follow the legal practice of the European Court, but it was the same in the case of other countries that had acceded earlier. The basic conditions, however, could be secured for the law courts up to accession.
Begegnungen25_Rockenbauer
Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 25:214–222.
ZOLTÁN ROCKENBAUER
Kultusminister (2000-2002)
In wie weit betrachteten, bzw. betrachten Sie die Bewahrung der Minderheiten als Aufgabe der staatlichen Kulturpolitik, und welche Mittel standen, bzw. stehen Ihnen zu diesem Zweck zur Verfügung?
Gibt es Ihrer Meinung nach einen bedeutenden Unterschied zwischen der Anwendung von kulturpolitischen Strategien bei großen, bzw. kleinen Nationen?
Kultur ist ein unerlässlicher Teil des nationalen Identitätsbewusstseins (sowohl bei Mehrheiten als auch bei Minderheiten). Nationale Kultur beruht primär auf der nationalen Sprache – mit wenigen Ausnahmen. Im Falle der nationalen Minderheiten gehören Sprache und Kultur zu den grundlegendsten Elementen der Identität, ihr Verlust bedeutet meist eine totale Assimilation.
In unserer Zeit sehe ich einen bedeutenden Unterschied in den kulturpolitischen Strategien der großen und kleinen Nationen, vor allem was den Radius und damit verbunden die Finanzierbarkeit der Kultur betrifft. Die Erweiterung des kulturellen Marktes steht im Interesse aller Nationen, aber die großen Nationen haben einen wichtigen Vorteil: ihr Sprachraum ist größer. Es ist leicht einzusehen, dass die englischen, russischen, deutschen oder französischen Bücher und Filme viel einfacher zu finanzieren sind als ungarische, finnische, slowenische, tschechische oder kroatische Werke, nicht zu sprechen von den Minderheitensprachen. Merkwürdigerweise gilt dies auch für Kunstarten, die nur indirekt an die Sprache gebunden sind, wie z.B. die bildende Kunst oder die Tanzkunst, weil oft die Sprache als Vermittlungsmedium eine weit stärkere Wirkung hat als das Kunstwerk selbst. Unter den aus kleineren Nationen stammenden Künstlern wurden nur diejenigen wirklich erfolgreich, die eine längere Zeit in kulturellen Zentren, wie Paris, Berlin, München oder New York, verbrachten. Und auch umgekehrt, viele talentierte und vielversprechende Künstler – darunter mehrere Ungarn – fielen aus dem internationalen Kanon nachdem sie aus dem Wirbel der Metropolen heimgekehrt sind. Andrerseits können die reichen Länder, im Allgemeinen, mehr Geld für die Kultur ausgeben – sowohl auf staatlicher, als auch auf privater Ebene. Durch die Werbeeinnahmen steigern die neuen Medien der Jahrtausendwende (Satellitenübertragung und Internet) den Unterschied zugunsten der kapitalreichen Kulturen und gleichzeitig erhöhen diese Medien die Effektivität der kulturellen Expansion. Gleichwohl können wir beobachten, welche Anstrengungen die Franzosen dafür tun um ihre Jahrhunderte lang erkämpfte kulturelle Position zu bewahren. Sie schrecken nicht davor zurück ihre kulturellen Märkte gegen die aggressive amerikanische „Kulturexpansion” mit verschiedenen rechtlichen Maßnahmen und wirtschaftlichen Regulierungen zu schützen.
Es gibt weltweit viele Modelle, die zur Bewahrung und Unterstützung der Entwicklung der nationalen Kulturen dienen, und viele dieser Modelle können erfolgreich sein. Es ist gar nicht sicher, dass das kulturelle Institutionssystem und die Kulturpolitik des einen Landes, auch in einem anderen erfolgreich verwendet werden kann. Ungarn muss seine jeweilige Kulturpolitik mit Hinsicht auf seine eigenen historischen, kulturellen und wirtschaftlichen Gegebenheiten ausarbeiten. Die gesamtungarische Kultur ist selbst eine besondere Art der „Minderheitenkultur” innerhalb dem europäischen Kulturgebiet, ähnlich der estnischen, tschechischen, slowenischen, kroatischen und bulgarischen Kultur. Diese Kulturen sind der negativen Wirkung der Globalisierung mehr ausgesetzt, und sind viel weniger vermarktbar als die Kulturen, die durch Weltsprachen vermittelt werden. Ich bin der Meinung, dass je kleiner der kulturelle Markt einer Nation ist, desto mehr bedarf er der staatlichen Förderung, und desto weniger darf er den rein wirtschaftlichen Faktoren ausgeliefert werden.
Unter Berücksichtigung der Größe und der Tradition der Kulturfinanzierung bin ich überzeugt, dass Ungarn eine durchdachte nationale Kulturpolitik und ein zentrales Finanzierungssystem braucht, dessen primäre – aber nicht einzige – Aufgabe die Bewahrung, Bereicherung und Vererbung der ungarischen Kultur ist. Der ungarische Staat trägt heute die Verantwortung für die differenzierte Unterstützung
a) der ungarischen Mehrheitskultur in Ungarn,
b) der Kultur der ungarischen Minderheit im Karpatenbecken,
c) der ungarischen Kultur der Emigration und
d) der Kultur der Minderheiten in Ungarn.
Der Staat kann zwar auf dem Gebiet der Kultur eine wichtige unterstützende und anspornende Rolle spielen, letztendlich wird aber die Kultur nicht von dem Staat, sondern von den Mitgliedern der Gesellschaft – von Individuen und Gemeinschaften – am Leben erhalten. Das Gleichgewicht der kulturellen Nachfrage und des Angebotes kann nicht mit staatlichen Mitteln gesichert werden, der Staat kann aber eine regulierende Funktion haben. Die Aufrechterhaltung der kulturellen Vielfalt ist eine grundlegende Pflicht des Staates, und es ist ihre Aufgabe mittels der Kraft der Kultur auch nationalpolitische Ziele zu fördern. (So ein Ziel ist die Bewahrung der nationalen Kultur vor den Herausforderungen der Globalisierung, aber auch der Schutz des Gemeinwohls, der Moral, der humanen Werte, und die Verstärkung der nationalen Identität.) Der Staat erfüllt seine Pflichten angemessen, wenn er möglichst viele private Gelder in die Finanzierung der Kultur einbeziehen kann, und dadurch die vervielfachte Summe der Unterstützung der Kultur zur Verfügung stellt. Die Forderungen der Marktwirtschaft unterstützen in keiner Weise die kulturelle Vielfalt, ganz im Gegenteil, sie uniformisieren und bevorzugen die kommerziellen, leicht vermarktbaren Produkte. Es ist äußerst riskant, die Finanzierung der nationalen Kultur großteils den marktwirtschaftlichen Faktoren zu unterwerfen. Die öffentliche Finanzierung soll in erster Linie dazu beitragen die größtmögliche Auswahl an Möglichkeiten zu bewahren. Dabei werden solche Bereiche gefördert, die nicht oder kaum vermarktbar sind. Dies trifft meist auf die Kultur der Minderheiten zu. Die Kultur dieser Volksgruppen bedarf des besonderen Schutzes. Es ist die Verantwortung des ungarischen Staates, die Sprache und Kultur der außerhalb der Grenzen Ungarns lebenden ungarischen Gemeinden, und der innerhalb der Grenzen des Landes lebenden nationalen Minderheiten zu bewahren. Genauso wie die Nachbarländer die Verantwortung dafür tragen, dass die Kultur der auf ihrem Gebiet lebenden ungarischen Minderheiten und die Kultur ihrer eigenen Minderheiten in Ungarn aufrechterhalten wird.
Demzufolge sind die wichtigsten Bereiche der staatlichen Förderung der nationalen Kultur:
– die Förderung des Schul- und Unterrichtswesens auf nationaler (und Minderheits-) Ebene
– die Förderung der kulturellen Institutionen auf nationaler (und Minderheits-) Ebene
– das System der normativen kulturellen Förderungen der Selbstverwaltungen
– differenzierte Projektförderungen (meist durch Ausschreibungen)
– kulturelle Steuer- und Beitragsbegünstigungen.
Im Weiteren soll sich die staatliche Förderung auf solche Grenzbereiche ausdehnen, wie die kulturelle Aktivität der Kirchen, oder die kulturellen Bezüge des Tourismus, der Jugendpolitik und des Umweltschutzes. Es ist also eine äußerst komplexe Frage, und die Harmonisierung dieser Bereiche ist die Aufgabe der Regierung, da es die Zuständigkeit mehrerer Ministerien betrifft. (Während der Regierungsperiode von FIDESZ zwischen 1998 und 2002 war das Ministerium für das Nationale Kulturerbe zuständig für die Kirchen und den Denkmalschutz, nicht aber für die Aufgaben im Zusammenhang mit dem Schul- und Unterrichtswesen, dem Tourismus, dem Umweltschutz und der Jugendpolitik. Bei Fragen, die in die Zuständigkeit von mehreren Ministerien fielen, versuchte das Ministerium für das Nationale Kulturerbe mittels interministerialer Vereinbarungen zusammenzuarbeiten.)
Welche Verfügungen haben Sie während Ihrer kulturpolitischen Tätigkeit zur Aufrechterhaltung der nationalen Minderheiten gefördert? Welche kulturpolitischen Aktionen wurden während Ihrer Amtszeit durchgeführt mit dem Ziel die Kultur der kleinen Nationen oder das Identitätsbewusstsein der nationalen Minderheiten innerhalb der Staatsgrenzen zu stärken?
Die Frage bezieht sich vor allem auf konkrete Ereignisse, aber statt all die kleinen Details aufzureihen, versuche ich die grundlegende Konzeption an Hand von Beispielen zu erläutern.
Die im Rahmen der Millennium der Staatsgründung veranstalteten Festivitäten fanden in der Zeit meines Ministeramtes statt, was für die Regierung eine hervorragende Möglichkeit bereitete, eine ihrer wichtigsten nationalpolitischen Zielsetzungen, nämlich die Wiedervereinigung der ungarischen Kultur, in die Praxis umzusetzen. Nach unserer Auffassung umfasst die ungarische Kultur die Kultur des gesamten ungarischen Volkes, unabhängig von der Einteilung historischer Zeitalter und von geographischen Grenzen. Es gibt also keine ungarische Literatur, Musik oder Tanzkunst „außerhalb der Grenzen Ungarns” – nur die in ihrer Gesamtheit geltende ungarische Literatur, Musik und Tanzkunst. So haben wir die zum Anlass des Millenniums – an sich ein Fest des gesamten ungarischen Volkes – organisierten Projekte und die für die Projekte abgesonderten öffentlichen Ressourcen auch den Gemeinden außerhalb der Grenzen Ungarns zugänglich gemacht. Im Gegensatz zu der Praxis der früheren Jahrzehnte konnten alle ungarischen Künstler, Wissenschaftler, Gruppen und Institutionen sowohl diesseits, wie auch jenseits der Grenze an den Ausschreibungen des Ministeriums für das Nationale Kulturerbe teilnehmen. Zugleich gab es – wie oben beschrieben, gerade weil die Kulturfinanzierung bei Minderheiten eine besonders wichtige Rolle spielt – lokal verwendbare Projektpakete, die ausgesprochen für die Ungarn ausgearbeitet wurden, die ihren Wohnsitz außerhalb des Vaterlandes hatten. Obwohl keine Quote festgesetzt wurde, erhielten die Bewerber, die außerhalb der Grenzen Ungarns lebten, einen Zehntel der jeweiligen Projektgelder. Ein ähnlicher Prozentsatz war gültig bei der Verteilung der Gelder, die zur Förderung von Projekten aus dem sog. „Ministerfond” (eine Summe, über die der Minister frei verfügt) abgesondert waren.
Um der Einheit der gesamtungarischen Kultur zu betonen, strukturierten wir ab 2000 das System der staatlichen Preise für künstlerische Tätigkeit um, damit die geographische Abstammung – im Gegensatz zu der früheren Regelung – bei der Anerkennung der künstlerischen Leistungen kein Hindernis sei. Demzufolge wurde etwa 15% der kulturellen Ehrenpreise an außerhalb der Grenzen Ungarns lebende Künstler verliehen. (Die Anzahl der zu verleihenden Preise wurde jedoch erhöht, damit sich die heimischen Künstler durch diese Änderung nicht benachteiligt fühlen.)
Die Pflege der Sprache ist grundlegend für die Erhaltung der zur Minderheit gehörenden Gemeinden. Der Erhaltung der Sprache kann – neben dem Schul- und Unterrichtswesen, der Tätigkeit der Kirchen und den elektronischen Medien – am meisten durch die Ausgabe von Büchern und Zeitungen, bzw. durch Theateraufführungen geholfen werden. Im Vergleich zu früheren Jahren standen sowohl den ungarischen Gemeinden jenseits der Grenze als auch den Minderheiten in Ungarn größere Ressourcen zur Veröffentlichung von Büchern und Zeitschriften zur Verfügung. Die Unterstützung der ungarischen Bibliotheken außerhalb der Grenzen Ungarns ist ebenfalls eine vorrangige Aufgabe. Das Ministerium versuchte die Bibliotheken durch Nachlassankäufe, mittels der Zuwendung von Büchern, sowie das Abonnieren von Fachzeitschriften zu unterstützen und zum Anschluss der Hauptbibliotheken an das Internet beizutragen. Es soll hier bemerkt werden, dass mittels der Herausgabe von Büchern der Versuch unternommen wurde die Herausbildung der Literatursprache der Zigeuner zu fördern.
Die außerhalb der Grenzen des Landes wirkenden ungarischsprachigen Theatergruppen tragen bedeutend zur Erhaltung der ungarischen Gemeinde bei. Die zur Förderung dieser Theatergruppen abgesonderten Summen wurden mehr als verdreifacht, nicht allein um ihre Inbetriebhaltungskosten und die Erweiterung ihres Repertoires zu unterstützen, aber auch um ihren Reisen und Gastvorträgen eine Richtung zu geben, ihnen bei der Orientierung zu helfen. Außer den gegenseitigen Besuchen und Gastvorträgen der inländischen Theater und der Theatergruppen der ungarischen Minderheiten, sowie dem jährlich veranstalteten ’Fest der außerhalb der Grenzen Ungarns wirkenden Theatergruppen’ in Kisvárda, wo sich im Rahmen von verschiedenen Programmen die Möglichkeit bietet Erfahrungen zu sammeln, wollten wir in erster Linie erreichen, dass die ungarischsprachigen Theatergruppen in dem Karpatenbecken ihren Radius erweitern und ein möglichst breites Publikum ansprechen können. Wir waren besonders bestrebt zum Ausbauen der Wechselbeziehungen beizutragen, die nicht allein auf das eine oder andere von einer ungarischen Minderheit bewohnte Gebiet der Nachbarländer konzentrieren, sondern die nach Möglichkeit auch zwischen Siebenbürgen, Oberungarn und der Woiwodina die gegenseitigen Beziehungen ausbauen, also eine Orientierung erfahren.
In dem staatlichen Budget sonderten wir selbständige Fonds für die Unterstützung der Roma-Kultur und die Rettung der Kultur der Csangos in der Moldau ab. Unser Ministerium übernahm somit bedeutende Aufgaben im Zusammenhang mit der Bewahrung der kulturellen Identität der heimischen nationalen und ethnischen Minderheiten. Das Ministerium unterstützte die kommunalen und regionalen Institutionen, sowie die landesweiten Selbstverwaltungen der Minderheiten durch Ausschreibungen und einmalige Zuwendungen, wenn sie in ihren Räumlichkeiten kulturellen Werkstättenprogrammen ein zu Hause boten. Bei der Beurteilung der Bewerbungen von Minderheiten und den einmaligen Zuwendungen hielten wir vor Augen, dass die eher benachteiligten Kleinsiedlungen und Kleingemeinden bevorzugt werden sollen. Bei der Auswertung der Bewerbungen wurden die landesweiten Selbstverwaltungen der Minderheiten und die kulturellen Vereine der Minderheiten miteinbezogen.
Als neue Institution wurde in 1999 das Nationale Informations- und Bildungszentrum der Zigeuner ins Leben gerufen.
In 2001 gründeten wir das „Haus der Traditionen”, eine nationale Kultureinrichtung, das als Bildungs- und Sammlungszentrum der (fort)lebenden Folklore funktioniert. Die Aufgabe dieser selbständigen staatlichen Institution ist die Sammlung, Erhaltung und Bekanntmachung im In- und Ausland der ungarischen Folklore und der folkloristischen Traditionen der Minderheiten, die in dem Karpatenbecken und besonders auf dem ungarischen Sprachgebiet als nationale Werte gelten. Nach unseren Vorstellungen wäre das „Haus der Traditionen” in dem kulturellen Komplex des in 2002 gegründeten „Millennium Stadtzentrums” (heute: „Palast der Künste”) eingegliedert worden. Mit dem neuen Konzertsaal der Ungarischen Philharmoniker, dem Museum der Modernen Ungarischen Kunst und dem in nächster Nähe befindlichen Nationaltheater hätten wir die Grundlagen des größten kulturellen Unternehmens in Mitteleuropa geschaffen. Dabei hatten wir das Ziel vor Augen, die ungarische Kultur in diesem neuen, auch den Tourismus anziehenden Stadtviertel konzentriert und in ihrer gesamten Vielfalt darzustellen. Mit dem Regierungswechsel mussten unsere Vorstellungen einige Änderungen erfahren, aber hoffentlich wird das „Haus der Traditionen” mehr oder weniger aufgrund der
früheren Konzeption in 2005 eröffnet.
Über die Unterstützung der ungarischen und minderheitlichen Volkstanzkunst hinaus, ist die Aufnahme und Ausgabe des Hörmaterials der Folklore besonders wichtig. Demzufolge wurde die aus zehn CDs bestehende Zigeunerliedsammlung von Károly Bari veröffentlicht, und die Plattenreihe „Új Pátria” abgefertigt. Diese Reihe ist die Frucht der Volksmusiksammlung „Utolsó óra” („Letzte Stunde”). Die jungen Ethnographen und Volksmusiker, die an diesem Projekt teilnahmen, hatten die Zielsetzung, den ungarischen Musikdialekt des Karpatenbeckens systematisch und umfassend zu sammeln. Nach den ursprünglichen Plänen würde das so entstandene digitale Tonarchiv, das über 1000 Stunden ausmacht, auch im „Haus der Traditionen” untergebracht.
Ähnlicherweise hat der Schutz des Bauerbes eine identitätswahrende Funktion auf den von Minderheiten bewohnten Gebieten. Die regelmäßige staatliche Unterstützung des ungarischen Denkmalschutzes außerhalb der Grenzen Ungarns begann in 1999. Die Bewahrung des ungarischen Bauerbes jenseits der Grenzen sollte eigentlich die Aufgabe der Nachbarstaaten sein, aber in diesem Bereich waren große Mangelhaftigkeiten zu beseitigen. So brachte die Regierung sowohl mit der rumänischen, als auch mit der slowakischen Regierung gemeinsame Fonds zum Schutz und Restaurierung wichtiger ungarischer Denkmäler zustande. Darüber hinaus wandten wir jährlich Summen in hundert Millionen Forint (1 Euro = 250 Forint) Höhe der Rettung ungarischer Denkmäler jenseits der Grenze zu.
Hat die politische Wende aus strategischer Sicht positiv auf die Aufrechterhaltung der kleinen Nationen eingewirkt?
Sowohl in Ungarn, als auch in der Mehrheit der ehemaligen kommunistischen Länder, wo es zu keinem ethnischen Kriegskonflikt kam, brachte der Systemwandel in jedem Fall die Entfaltung der Freiheitsrechte des Individuums mit sich, auch wenn die jetzige Situation immer noch nicht zufriedenstellend ist. Es ist auf jedem Fall unbestreitbar, dass die Minderheiten ihre kulturellen und politischen Gemeinden ins Leben rufen konnten, in mehreren Parlamenten der Region Abgeordnete haben, an lokalen Wahlen teilnehmen können, und ihre Kultur und Sprache freier benutzen können.
In Ungarn sind die Selbstverwaltungen der Minderheiten ausgebaut worden und, obwohl sie automatisch (ohne gewählt zu werden oder in Folge eines beschleunigten Verfahrens) keine Parlamentssitze bekommen können, nehmen ihre Vertreter in den verschiedenen Parteien an der Rechtsetzung teil, und ihre Grundrechte sind gesichert. In der Kulturfinanzierung stehen den nationalen Minderheiten auch besondere Ressourcen zur Verfügung zur Bewahrung und Bereicherung der Kultur.
In der Zeit der Integration der Verwaltungsgebiete kamen nach 1990 sehr oft Interessensgemeinschaften zwischen den ostmitteleuropäischen kleinen Nationen zustande. Worauf ist es Ihrer Meinung nach zurückzuführen, dass die kleinen Nationen der Regionen die zwischenstaatlichen Kontakte nicht verstärkt zur Bewahrung der kleinen Nationen nutzen, und daran anknüpfend nicht enger im Interesse der auf dem Gebiet der Nachbarstaaten lebenden Minderheiten zusammenarbeiten?
Während sich der Integrationsprozess in Westeuropa beschleunigte, war in den 1990er Jahren in den ehemaligen kommunistischen Ländern der ostmitteleuropäischen Region eine gegensätzliche Tendenz zu beobachten, die zum Zerfall mehrerer Staaten (der Sowjetunion, der Tschechoslowakei oder Jugoslawien), in einigen Fällen zum Krieg führte. Die Loslösung von der Sowjetunion trug einerseits in den ehemaligen sozialistischen Ländern zur Verstärkung des nationalen Identitätsbewusstseins bei, und führte andrerseits infolge der Beitrittsbestrebungen der Staaten der Region in die westlichen Integrationsgemeinden (Europarat, NATO und der Europäische Union) zu einem Wettbewerb zwischen den Nationen. Auch gegensätzliche Initiativen waren zu beobachten, wie z.B. die „Pentagonale” für regionale Zusammenarbeit am Ende der 80er Jahre, die aber leider nach unüberlegten Erweiterungen bereits anderthalb Dutzend Mitgliedstaaten umfassend unter den Namen „Mitteleuropäische Initiative” (CEI) seinen Sinn verlor. Die Central European Free Trade Association (CEFTA), die aufgrund der EFTA ins Leben gerufen wurde, musste oft erkennen, dass die Mitgliedsstaaten sich nicht an den Regelungen der Gemeinde hielten, was die Arbeit oft unmöglich machte.
Als meistversprechende Initiative galt der heute mit schwankender Intensität arbeitende Bund der „Visegrad Staaten” (V4), eine hauptsachlich politisch-kulturelle Zusammenarbeit, die nach einer beinah zur Auflösung führenden Passivität Mitte der 90er Jahre dank der Orbán-Regierung in 1998 einen neuen Schwung bekam. Das Ziel war vor allem, die Interessen und Strategien der vier Länder bei den EU-Beitrittsverhandlungen zu harmonisieren. Die V4 pflegte ab 1999 starke kulturelle Beziehungen unter den Mitgliedstaaten dadurch, dass neben den Treffen der Ministerpräsidenten und Außenminister die Mitgliedsstaaten das halbjährliche Treffen der Kultusminister verkündeten, sowie einen gemeinsamen kulturellen Fonds aufstellten. Die gemeinsame Arbeit begann in 2000, einem Jahr nach der Vorbereitungssitzung, und umfasste über den kulturellen Erfahrungsaustausch hinaus die Ausarbeitung gemeinsamer Programme. Bis 2002 wurden mehrere Vorstellungen ausgearbeitet: V4 Filmfestivals, gemeinsam finanzierte Filme, die Erfassung der Holzkirchen diesseits und jenseits der Grenze, Buchübersetzungsprojekte, Veranstaltung von Folklorefestivals. Das erste solche Folklorefestival wurde in März 2002 in Budapest veranstaltet. Infolge des Regierungswechsels in 2002, scheint heute die kulturelle Zusammenarbeit, die von den „Visegrad Staaten” initiiert wurde, weniger intensiv zu sein. Die geplante Erweiterung der V4 droht mit dem negativen Beispiel der Pentagonale.
Die kulturelle Zusammenarbeit in Mitteleuropa wäre aber sowohl auf interstaatlicher, als auch auf regionaler Ebene äußerst wichtig. Viele – ich selbst auch – sind der Meinung, dass es, über die nationale Identität hinaus, eine mitteleuropäische kulturelle Identität gibt, die nicht nur zur Zeit der Monarchie, eine auf merkwürdige Art verwandte Weltanschauung für Polen, Ungarn, Österreicher, Tschechen, Slowaken und Juden bedeutete, und als Grundlage bedeutender literarischen und musikalischen Meisterwerke diente. Das war eigentlich auch zur Zeit der kommunistischen-sozialistischen Periode der Fall – zum Teil daraus folgend, dass die Staaten politisch auf einander angewiesen waren. Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg ist – neben der Literatur und der Musik – auch in der Filmkunst und den bildenden Künsten eine eigenartige mitteleuropäische Sichtweise zu bemerken, die viele Künstler in dieser Region und weltweit sehr bekannt machte. Ich bin überzeugt, dass eine intensive kulturelle Zusammenarbeit den kulturellen Markt der hier lebenden Völker gegenseitig erweitern könnte, was die Aufmerksamkeit der westlichen Welt auf die Kultur der neuen EU-Länder lenken würde. Um die Erfüllung dieser Aufgabe zu unterstützen, brachten wir in 2000 das Mitteleuropäische Kulturinstitut zustande, die die Zielsetzung hat, diese eigenartige Identität durch Veranstaltungen und Publikationen zu unterstützen, und die bunte und interessante Kultur dieser Region darzustellen.