Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)
6. Towns along the Hungarian and Slovak border
Towns along the Hungarian and Slovak border this only happened after 2001. The county local governments of the two countries have been in contact since 2002. The first steps were the courtesy visits of the presidents. Before that county local governments had had to hold talks with the Slovak administrative districts. As an example the agreement of country planning could be mentioned, which was already necessary in the council system. According to the minutes, these talks were conducted by special committees. Hungarian county local governments have to be rather diplomatic when contacting a Slovak partner. The establishment of relations can be made easier if the first steps are taken in English. With meetings becoming more frequent, people who can speak Hungarian, or even of Hungarian ethnicity, begin to appear. However, talks can be interrupted if the colleague in charge with maintaining relations changes jobs. In case of foreign affairs, personal contacts are very important. The county local government plays a mediating role between the different organizations. A good example for this is road construction. In Slovakia, public roads marked II and III belong to the county local governments, thus counties have roads of their own. In Hungary, on the other hand, only the roads within the boundaries of settlements belong to the local governments, so the roads between the particular settlements are owned by the state. Therefore, the organizations in charge of public roads belong to the counties in Slovakia, whereas in Hungary they belong to an administrative deconcentrated organization. In the present form of crossborder cooperation, county local governments can only support and influence road construction by organization or talks, because they are no decision-making bodies. Accordingly, it was the Road Management and Coordination Directorate (legal successor: Coordination Centre for the Development of Traffic - henceforth abbreviated CCDT) that submitted applications for grants in the period between 2004 and 2006 of the 1NTERREG IMA. The procedure was like this: the county local government discussed with the county local government of Košice that the ‘historical crossing points’ should be restored. Following this, the county local government applied to the deconcentrated organ for involving the crossing points in its plans. Planning was urged by the county local government, plans were devised, but only on the Hungarian side. Now the task of the county local government is to monitor the Slovak events. Only if planning is started on the Slovak side can they begin coordinating the activities between the Slovak county organization and CCDT, the Hungarian deconcentrated organ. 172
