Mezei István: Urban development in Slovakia (Pécs-Somorja, 2010)

6. Towns along the Hungarian and Slovak border

6. Towns along the Hungarian and Slovak border

Slovakia, which was established in 1993, is surrounded by a 1,672-kmlong border. It is bordered by five countries: Poland (with a shared border of 541.1 km), the Czech Republic (251.8 km), Austria (106.7 km), Hungary (664.7 km) and Ukraine (98.5 km). The area called borderland is, however, different in the different countries. The borderland areas may include towns, too. The situation of the divided towns is obvious, they are regarded as borderland towns, such as Komárno along the Hungarian border (the town now belonging to Slovakia has got several names: Öregkomárom [Oldkomárom], Révkomárom [Ferrykomárom], North Komárom, and opposite it, on the right bank of the Danube is the Hungarian South Komárom), Balassagyarmat (and Tótgyarmat [Slovenské Ďarmoty]) and Sátoraljaújhely (Slovenské Nové Mesto). It is a difficult task to determine the exact size of the borderland area, because in the course of the decades between 1918 and 1989 inter-settlement relations changed radically. After 1989, and especially 2004, with the accession of the two countries to the European Union, and after December 2007, when the borders were opened, new cross-border relations began to develop.

On the basis of the administrative units, no borderland area can be marked out, because it would give a stiff framework that could not make cooperation possible. Both the Slovak and the Hungarian regions and counties were organized in different historical conditions and, consequently, on very different principles. Neither of the two countries grasped the opportunity provided by their almost simultaneous accession to the NUTS system of the European Union, they did not take the other country into consideration when marking out their regional division and they did not attempt to try out solutions that would have been advantageous for both. Consequently, they did not coordinate the Slovak system of regions, the Hungarian system of counties and the regional NUTS system, either. The differences between the two administrative systems do not make it possible to provide an administrative framework for the borderland area (Figure 22).

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