Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)
6. Towns along the Hungarian and Slovak border
Towns along the Hungarian and Slovak border try. Similarly, the Slovak request for the support of the educational and cultural institutions shows that, compared with the small number and sporadic occurrence of Slovak people in Hungary, the required number of institutions and buildings were exaggerated. The activities of the special committees depend on the political attitude of each government in power, so no wonder that the work of the special committees has slowed down since the changes of government in the two countries. An example for this is the work of the glossary committee. One thing that creates many problems during negotiations is that the way concepts are used in the two countries is different. Therefore there is a need for a multilingual dictionary of regional development. Such a dictionary has already been compiled in the Czech, German and Slovak languages. It includes explanations of concepts in three languages. Modelled on this dictionary, a Hungarian and a Slovak monolingual dictionary began to be compiled in Hungary, but in the course of time, there was no money or no intention to compare the concepts in the two languages and compile a dictionary including both. This would have required expertise, but this last stage could not be organized. The failure is not only due to lack of money but also to the structural change in ministries. Development projects of this sort are often reassigned to different ministries. Besides, in the new ministry struggle for realizing the interests of the development sector has to be started from the very beginning, because at the new place other ministry tasks may be important. At the meeting in 2007 the joint committee did not discuss any new issues, it only surveyed the existing situation. There was an exchange of opinions concerning experience they had gained and they called each other’s attention to the possibilities of joint tenders. The existing situation and possibilities, however, require more than this, because, to further develop cooperation, the harmonization of statutory rules would be necessary in both countries. For the joint organization of services it would be important for both countries to harmonize laws and decrees so as to be able to settle legal relations and cover costs. It would also be necessary to harmonize the settlement and regional municipality tasks and competences in the two countries so that organs with approximately the same competences and authority could talk to each other. Examples of the difficulties in establishing and maintaining relations include the different legal backgrounds of the two countries and the fact that the mandatory tasks of local governments and the main-158
