The Past and the Present of Austrian – Hungarian Transborder Cooperations

Abstract

The aim of this study is to give a review of the development of affecting factors of the Austrian-Hungarian transborder region, from the change of the political system till now. The transborder region was toned in the Hungarian regional development, like a region of success. One of the causes of the success is the association of a centre region with a developped region of Western-Europe, especially Vienna. These connections already existed in the 20th century, but the „iron curtain" set up after the 2nd world war had made this part of Hungary a dead region.

Relations had started again in the seventies, first with shopping tourism; which tends even today and influences the development of the region. The official, institutional cooperations started in the middle of the eighties. The level of the cooperation was expended from state organisations to the different public institutions, through local governments. The reform of cooperations into an ordered, continuously working system was getting more and more important.

This system was the EUregion, founded by 1998. Besides the ordered relations there are some illegal transborder ones.

The closing part of the study summarizes those factors, which block the development of the cooperations. Among there we can find the economical differences, different regional institutional system and financing, such as the cultural difference between the two countries or the main tasks of regional policy.