1. The experiences of Budapest Gábor Bihary Member of the COR Budapest LOGON Conference One year EU membership review – experiences and perspectives Warsaw, 25-26 April 2005

2. The first year: mixed experiences Within the municipality With the surrounding region Lobbying in Brussels Cooperation with government Experiences with EU Funds Cooperation between the new Member States

3. Changes within the municipality On the basis of the officially accepted 15 years strategic development concept (passed in 2003) a medium-term, 8 years development programme has to be formulated The projects included into the medium-term development programme are all equipped with a „resource-map”, i.e. an assessment of local, central, EU and private resources for the project. The sum of the required local resources is confronted with the assessment of the financial resources of the capital city. The medium-term programme could become a reliable basis for all EU bids (for the Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund) from the side of Budapest.

4. Changes in the region of Budapest In the Central Hungarian Region (Budapest and the surrounding Pest county) the last years did not contribute to cohesion, because of a political debate about the splitting of the region into two parts. Budapest was arguing for keeping the region together, as the financial loss due to loosing Objective 1 status was assessed to be smaller than the loss if administratively splitting the functional urban area. The debate will end soon, the region will keep together and can finally start to develop joint programmes for the next planning period (as Phasing in region).

5. Lobbying in Brussels The establishment of the Budapest office The future of the Central Hungarian Region as „Phasing in region” was in the hearth of the lobby activity of Budapest in Brussels. The city became part of the lobby group of the Phasing in regions (with little hope for good result). Budapest is active participant of Eurocities, part of the Lisbon Working Group and vice-chair of the largest Forum, on Economic Development. Through Eurocities, Budapest is actively lobbying for strengthening the Urban strand of the Structural Funds and for the inclusion of large cities and metropolitan regions into the Lisbon process.

6. Cooperation with the government The cooperation with the Government of Hungary is much better now than at the period of accession negotiations. Budapest gets informed about the Structural Funds (SAWP) negotiations. There are good examples, that the office has used arguments received from Budapest, in lobbying for urban development and public transport to get higher priority in EU funds. There are some tensions between the government and Budapest, however, there is a hope, that the government will support the most important development ideas of Budapest to become Cohesion Fund projects.

7. Experiences with EU Funds The learning process is sometimes very painfull. The Central Sewage Plant is causing a lot of head-aches for decision makers, because of the strict EU rules on institutional settings, procurement rules, etc. Budapest wants to achieve changes in the post 2007Structural Funds: at least energy-saving renovation of residential buildings should be eligible for EU support. The very rigid exclusion of any housing related use of the Structural Funds does not address the new situation of the EU, the increase in housing problems with the accession of the ten new Member States.

8. Cooperation between the new Member States In the last year a quite good cooperation among the new Member States, especially the Visegrád countries has been developed. One example on that was the meeting of Housing Ministers in Prague in May, where some important changes could be achieved in the final communique. Another example is the meeting of Ministers responsible for regional development, held here in Warsaw some 10 days ago, where the four Visegrád countries signed a joint declaration on common actions in shaping regional policy. These collaborations are strongly supported by the capital cities of these countries, in some cases ideas for joint actions are coming from the already well established cooperation between the capital cities.