Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)
5. Regional organization in Slovakia
Regional organization in Slovakia regions that ‘voted badly’, i.e. voted against the governing parties. There were also some efforts made to relocate central institutions away from the capital city. The relocation of the Slovak National Bank to Banská Bystrica would have weakened Bratislava and strengthened Banská Bystrica'. In spite of some rightful criticism, it is a fact that Bratislava has developed into a regional centre of increasing importance since Slovakia became independent in 1993, and especially after its accession to the European Union in 2004. This was made possible by the radical changes in the geopolitical situation of the region, because, by pulling down the iron curtain and moving the checked border eastwards, i.e. by setting up the Schengen system, Slovakia has become an important regional growth space of the European Union. Due to the special location of the city, regionality has a wider, cross-border importance. The administrative situation and geographical location of the city provide favourable opportunities that strengthen each other. The geographical location of the capital city is unique, since it can be found at the western edge of the country. According to Slovak analysts, the fact that Bratislava is so close to Austria and is the closest of all the capital cities of Eastern Europe to the Western European countries and the western culture makes Bratislava a gate between east and west. This location has decided advantages, especially from the point of view of financial investments. Planners and developers first turned their attention to the Vienna- Bratislava route. They pointed out that, with the iron curtain pulled down, this region would be the laboratory of integration, because the differences between the two capital cities were so large that they would lead to the development of Bratislava, the weaker one (Mastilak 2004). There were no institutionalized relations between the two cities for long centuries. What is more, both were on the periphery of their countries and in the two world systems during the decades of the cold war. Now this region may turn into the centre of Central Europe. After the collapse of the Soviet eastern bloc * * It was Vladimír Mečiar’s visionary idea to turn Slovakia into a country with three centres. Bratislava would have remained the administrative centre, Košice, by developing business life, the economic centre, and Banská Bystrica the financial centre of the country. Therefore, Bank Slovakia, which manages 60% of the National Wealth Fund, and Dopravná Banka (a shipping bank) were moved there in 1994, so as to set up the national centre of the capital market transactions in this town. 122
