Regional Development Policy in Slovakia and Its Medium Term Appearance in Southern Slovakia’s Border Regions Regarding the Development Assistance Policy of the European Union

Abstract

The study deals with the development of regional development policy-making in Slovakia within the last 10 years and in relation to the country's EU membership. The essay further explores the Slovak–Hungarian cross-border corporation attitude in the regional development strategies of the Southern Slovakia's regional self-governments.

The first steps towards the decentralized coordination of the regional development were made in 1999 [in the period 1989-1998 regional development was still characterized by top- down approach]. Since 1999 the country has realised comprehensive reforms in public ad- ministration with fiscal decentralization, recently local and regional self-governments have real power to influence the development of their environments. Actors of regional development have recognized that the space does not end at the border – after 2000 in many border regions there was a boom of cross-border cooperations [intersettlement, interregional and interinstitutional cooperations].

Slovakia's entry to the European Union made huge effect on the financial resources avail- able for regional development. During the programming period 2007-2013 Slovakia has the chance to get approximately 14 billion EUR from the EU on the issues of regional develop- ment. However to achieve cohesion of Slovakia's regions is necessary to give up the use of the Slovak nationalistic approach in regional development policy-making, to which the southern regions inhabited by Hungarians often fali victim (regions and municipalities inhab- ited by Slovaks, which are already more developed, are the major beneficiaries).