NKFP pályázat

5/020/2001

Title:

(Facing the challenges to national political, economic and legal culture in Hungary between 2000 and 2006 for a successful EU accession in the light of the changes in the internal integration EU rules.)

Short description

Accession to the European Union will represent the most serious challenge to the whole of Hungarian society in the 2010s. Hungary is to enter the highly competitive market of the EU and will take part in the entire process of decision making. It demands the improving competitiveness of the business sphere and the establishing of powerful negotiating capacities by the public administration.

In order to identify the winners and losers of accession, such an interdisciplinary research is needed in which the scientific tools of economics, law, politology and history may equally be utilized. This project is based on a cooperation like the one above. By the end of 2002, this approach will allow the setting of the framework for alternative economic and political strategies so as to contribute, on the one hand, to the positive outcome of the plebiscite of whether to join the Union and, on the other hand, to the ever more successful Hungarian participation in the integration.

The abundance of studies put in an available form to the wide public will be one of the major results of the research, in which answer may be found to the question of what is the Union like Hungary is about to join and why.

The challenges of the twenty-first century manifest themselves to Hungary through the institutional deepening of European integration. Exactly at the same time the EU is confronted with the constraints of globalization. Thus Hungary will integrate with a Union where a model crisis of globalization has been unfolding. It can be expected that this change will spread beyond the traditions of the integration, even the whole of its philosophy. That is why the continuous research of an interdisciplinary nature on the changing European Union is necessary.

This research project set the aim to describe the main characteristics of the internal integrational development of the European Union on one hand. The research is also to focus on Hungarian preparations and on the elaboration of recommendations of how to create adequate conditions for the negotiations. We try to identify winners and losers in this study, and analyze the preparedness of Hungarian public administration.

Accession will bring along a quicker development to Hungary, but the way we can use the advantages offered by the EU depends on us, too. Therefore the research contributes to the elaboration of the most successful accession strategy in the economic, political and legal senses all. Due to its interdisciplinary character, this research offers such unique results that help Hungarian decision-makers in a historically decisive period to form and communicate the most effective catching-up strategy.

Head of project: Andras Inotai, director, Institute for World Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences