Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)
6. Towns along the Hungarian and Slovak border
Actors of administration survival every day. This causes further difficulties in developing relations with the other country. Regarding education, social provision and other services, agreement must be reached on covering the state and municipality costs of the service concerned. The issues arising in education have been solved by national feeling so far. In the secondary schools of the towns close to the border there are a high number of students who are not Hungarian citizens, but, due to the many kinds of maintainers, the burdens are shared. As an example we could mention the town Sátoraljaújhely, where there are county-, town- and church-maintained secondary schools. Since 2007 the National Slovak Minority Local Government has had the maintenance rights of the Slovak-Hungarian bilingual primary school, which is a new form. In this way, the education costs of the approximately 100 students of the town are shared among the different maintainers. The joint organization of services requires that both countries should harmonize their laws and decrees to clarify legal relations and cover costs. 6. 5 Actors of administration 6. 5. 1 County municipalities In most cases, the personal character is typical of the relations of county municipalities. In the course of conversations, it turns out that there are people originating from Felvidék among the officials or some others that have some relatives or other personal connection there. If they find an expert of Hungarian ethnicity on the Slovak side, too, then cooperation will be smooth. The local government of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County prepared for the accession to the European Union by sending its international official to Brussels as a representative between 1998 and 2002. This meant that the expert concerned travelled there four times a year. This step had evident benefits, since the two neighbouring counties (Košice and Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County) could gain exact information about the 2004-2006 Hungary-Slovakia-Ukraine neighbourhood programme advertised in 2002 as early as 2001. The reformation of the administrative system took place at different points of time in the two countries. County councils were replaced by local governments as early as in 1990 in Hungary, whereas in Slovakia 171
