The Changing Concept of Central Europe in Space and Time

Abstract

The debates about Central Europe have calmed down by now, the political structures and perspectives have changed. Parties ruling over countries have disappeared in the bottomless sinks and Central Europe as the protestation channel against the great powers lost its significance. The fact and possibility of the admission to the NATO and to the EU oppressed the further organisation of the institutionalisation of Central Europe. And, as I have already referred to it, a race has started between the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary for the admission paper from Brussels; especially the Czech Republic – which was considered as the economically most developed in the region – did not lay an emphasis on it and played the role of the superior lonely traveller (which exploded by time). Unfortunately, it looks like that it is important to be a Central European state only until it is the allusion of its belonging to the western culture complexes (Kulturkreis) and when the negotiations start with it about the conditions of accession, the rest looses its importance. It is much to be wished that the Central European consciousness remained without the political background as well and not only as historical structural unit. The EU, especially the expanding EU, is such a huge structural and territorial formation that beside the state and Europe, region and Europe point of views, there is certainly another basis as well. This further basis should include the notions of Western, Northern, Southern and Central Europe, of course, these could have encoded names as well, such as, Mediterranean macroregion, Atlantic macroregion, etc. Anyhow, these notions have to be defined but they must by all means reproduce a narrower (as compared to Europe) spatial consciousness. This is the future; what is important from the aspect of the present is that not the European consciousness should stand above the national consciousness but a link to a larger unit, to historical parallels, like for instance, Hungarian–Austrian, Hungarian–Polish, Hungarian–Czech parallels and their relations to each other.