These attitudes are compared with the views of the general public in the respective regions. 2 The Structural Funds are a set of financial instruments aimed at implementing the EU's cohesion policy. An examination of political economy encourages us to undertake a context-specific and historically sensitive analysis of the economic and political processes at work in EU construction and CP design.
Due to the sensitive nature of the subject, participants' strict anonymity is ensured. In this section, I present a brief overview of the CP's political economy in the broader context of European integration. The aim is to identify how the CP has been related to other economic and political processes involved in the construction of the EU.
In the 2014-2020 programming period, structural and cohesion funds still represent more than 30% of the European budget.10. One of the consequences of this development was an increasing skepticism towards the European project among the citizens of the EU member states. In particular, a binary approach that pits CP against the rest of the economic developments taking place in the European Community at the time does not recognize the.
This can also be advantageously linked to the issue of the previously mentioned European legitimacy deficit.
Implementing Regional Funds in Hungary: Multi-level Governance and Partnerships
The various administrative authorities responsible for the individual OPs were placed under the supervision of the relevant ministries. The NDA was placed under the Ministry of National Development and Economy and the administrative authorities were placed under its charge. After the change of government in 2010, the national development goals were redrawn as part of the Széchenyi Plan launched in 2011.
The first phase was, from the beginning of the 1990s, characterized by a change in the territorial management regime, which was marked by the adoption of a law on local government in 1990. The third period, which started with a new law on local government in connection with the constitutional reforms adopted by the government elected in 2010 saw a strong push towards a central model of governance. As mentioned, the necessity to include civil society and private partners is partly a response to concerns regarding the democratic credentials of the European project.
The staff of the planning unit, for example, were very young and had a very dynamic energy. One example of the limitation on the partnership principle and the centralization dynamic can be found in relation to the Monitoring Committees. In Hungary, according to the partnership document of the NDP, the programming process for the 2004-2006 period included more than 900 civil society organizations.
As explained by one participant, the partners were consulted on the three sub-documents of the national strategy, namely the strategy document, the OP document and the programming document. Regarding the preparation of the strategy document, a large number of partners participated by giving opinions on the text prepared by ZJK. In this case, the respective ministries were able to decide on the nature and scope of the partnerships and the type of partners.
This period was characterized by reform efforts aimed at addressing several structural issues related to local and regional governance through a strong centralizing dynamic. This was driven by a concern for efficiency and avoiding some of the time-consuming conflicts that arose in the previous organization. They were also responsible for both the implementation and oversight of the programs.
Narratives of EU Funds in Hungary: Corruption and Grey Legality
Also worrying was that the new NDA was kept outside the scope of legislative oversight – a sign of the government's attempt to limit stakeholder participation in development and exclude the opposition from the process (Campbell and Korkuk 2011). As Pálné Kovács et al. noted, “concepts such as regionalism or partnership have been used as tools for the recentralization of the policy process and for the distribution of resources beyond the interests of clients and cliques. I now turn to analyze some of the stories collected through interviews with selected participants who have been involved in the management of the cohesion funds in Hungary at national and European levels.
First, one of the strongest narratives in the conversation with Hungarian participants involved in CP implementation concerns the way cohesion and structural funds are linked to issues of corruption. One important idea was that, in addition to actual corruption scandals, there was a "grey area" consisting of various legal ways in which public money could be "wasted, misused, or even stolen."38 One of the ways often mentioned was connected for public procurement and bidding processes. In 2012, it emerged that the eligibility criteria in the procurement process were set in such a way that only one company was ultimately eligible.
In this case, the EU decided to suspend its payment, which in effect means that Hungarian taxpayers will cover the corrupt processes at the national level.39 The record of corruption in Hungary has been cited several times, for example in connection with the recent case of the construction of the M4 metro line, for which the European Anti-Corruption Office (OLAF) asked for the repayment of approximately 200 million euros which was. The type of corruption specific to EU funds is often labeled "legitimate corruption" insofar as it does not typically involve bribery or collusion between low-level bureaucrats and private interests, but rather operates 'legitimately' through contracts that directly benefit high-ranking politicians and business . elite of the country (ibid). This in fact violates one of the key principles organizing EU structural funds – the principle of additionality.
In other words, projects are chosen to favor special interests at the expense of the wider society or economy. This can be a roundabout way of directing funds to organizations or individuals close to political power, or a means of spending further funds when there are difficulties in absorbing EU funds, with little regard to the overall benefit of the project to Hungarian society. One participant explained how noisy construction works were carried out in a university during the period of the year when exams were held, greatly disturbing the students.
In other words, several of the participants have noticed a tendency for the government to incorporate EU funds into a broader discourse on national expenditure. The key point was that communications around the Structural Funds could not be assessed outside the context of the broad and relentless anti-EU campaign that the government has been waging since at least 2012 and which has escalated in 2016 and 2017. While the Hungarian public accepted radical reforms and a difficult "transition" to joining the EU, the feeling that the country's economic and political situation has not improved for the majority of its population has led to a sense of withdrawal or even hostility towards Europe.
Europe’s responsibility and response
For this participant, this was not only related to the particularities of the current government, but rather to deep structural and political issues. Both academic and public debates have called for a more systematic engagement with the European "crisis of democracy" and for a closer examination of the evolving democratic challenges in the Union, especially in times of crisis and austerity (Pitty 2014, Isakhan and Slaughter 2014). This was also seen as an issue of corruption, in general, underpinned by the lack of adequate democratic oversight of the use of EU funds.
When considering the possibility of developing good relations between their European institutions and Hungary in the context of the government's anti-EU campaign, there seems to be a consensus that they are not connected. The process in which, as already mentioned, the EU institutions depoliticize certain processes may play a role in the EU's inability to respond to attacks of an ideological nature that insist on the repoliticization of policies and decisions taken at the EU level. In the case of the relationship between cohesion funds and social identification with the EU, it can facilitate the investigation of questions that have raised policy makers and commentators.
This is illustrative of the way in which the political and ideological orientations operating within the EU are sometimes obscured by the use of technocratic discourses that tend to depoliticize certain processes. In the context of the EU's eastward enlargement, CP was an important driver of market liberalization, as candidate countries had to undertake deep reforms to qualify for the funds. This in turn has contributed to the increase in negative perceptions of the EU in the country.
However, the EU proved very limited in responding to the way CP was managed in Hungary, and how it affected understanding of the EU more broadly. This description aptly captures some of the recent political, social and economic developments in Hungary. These participants developed very technical discourses about the role and performance of Hungary in the EU and refused to engage in the political or ideological processes at work.
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