REGIONAL PROCESSES IN HUNGARY FROM PHARE TO SMART SPECIALISATION

Europeanisation and regionalization, European convergence versus local divergence are important and timely questions as regards the future of EU cohesion policy, that originally aimed to reduce economic, social and territorial inequalities. Recently, it does not solely support regional development and stimulate modernization processes, but also aims to advance competitiveness, job creation, innovation, and sustainable growth and development (Europe 2020 strategy), especially at the sub-national level. The comparison of regional processes, institutional systems, experience and the originating potential future scenarios of transition economies are interesting but yet under-examined fields of study. Is there a specific way (trajectory) of regionalization in transition economies, or practices vary from country to country? Do EU level policy changes affect national and sub-national level institutions and processes and if yes, for what extent? PHARE programmes were introduced in the early 1990s, short after the change of regime, and following the EU accession, Structural Funds have become the main public financial instruments in these countries, accompanied with a massive foreign direct investment flow. The subsequent EU programming periods and the connected terminology have been predominantly shaping regional policy in these countries; Operational Programmes, Action Plans, Logical Framework Approach, Project fiches, Regional Innovation Strategies, Local Action Groups, Competitiveness Poles, Clustering, Smart Specialisation, Re-industrialisation are only a few keywords that describe this era. The objective of this study is to present a qualitative framework to the evaluation of the period from 1990 to 2015 in Hungary, as a case study of the transition economies, with the identification of the most important milestones and tendencies of regionalization. The relevance of the research is supported by the recent elimination of the NUTS II (regional) level institutional system in the country, and the relocation of ESIF management to the NUTS III (county) level. This process poses the question if Hungary is a trendsetter in Central and Eastern Europe with this practice, or a unique case. The contribution to the state-of-the-art is a qualitative, thorough presentation of the processes, focusing on the administrative and institutional aspects that can on one hand provide a better understanding and secondly, can form an inspiring basis and qualitative methodology for further research on past and future territorial processes and the future of Cohesion policy in the CEE region.


INTRODUCTION
Hungary, though being a unitarian country, was a front runner in Central and Eastern Europe as regards the establishment of the legal and institutional framework for regionalization. In 1996, the Act on territorial development and spatial planning was accepted and entered into force. From that time, several modifications were introduced, statistical planning regions were established, regional development councils and agencies were set up and a significant capacity and competence development have been realized at the regional (NUTS II) and micro-regional level. This process did not fulfill the expectations about the role of the historically traditional, county (NUTS III) level. A new profession and a scientific discipline have emerged and strengthened. This dynamic tendency resulted several success stories, good and bad examples, a new generation of experts and thousands of implemented EU co-financed development projects with a high absorption capacity, as quantitative indicators. Is it a success story then? Where are we standing now, after more than two decades, what lessons can be learned and what future holds for us? How regionalization could be measured; through an indicator-based methodology (eg. absorption capacity), or through the existence and sustainable operation of regional (NUTS II) level institutions rather? Though Hungary has been characterised by a centralised system from the very beginning of the examined period, the recent elimination of the regional (NUTS II) level from the territorial development institutional system raises important questions that go beyond national boundaries to the direction of the Europeanisation concept (Radaelli, 2003;Ladrech, 2010).
The main motivation is to shed light on recent processes and thus, generate further crosscountry qualitative research in the CEE region in order to identify (1) divergencies from research results exploiting quantitative methods; (2) possible dynamism and future scenarios in policy-making and implementation. The paper is structured into a literature review, objectives and methodology, the presentation of a V4 level outlook, a single country case study and conclusions in the last section.

LITERATURE REVIEW
There exist some interesting recent studies on the effectiveness and impact of Cohesion Policy in the CEE countries, but these studies either focus on the utilisation of EU funds and absorption capacity with a quantitative methodology (Pálmai, 2014), or combine empirical results and statistical data in order conduct cross-country comparison and identify different patterns and trajectories from the past (Nagyházi, 2015). Other authors have published works on Central and Eastern Europe about regional dynamics (Palermo and Parolari, 2013), regional development agencies (Halkier et al., 1998), decentralization and transition (Kirchner, 1999) and there are some country-specific essays also for the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic (Nemec and Matejová, 2014), Poland and the Czech Republic (Yoder, 2003), and other works on horizontal partnership and patterns of sub-national governance in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary (Dabrowski, 2013a), without being exhaustive. The current study is different and yet unique in its single-country, in-depth empirical and process-based focus with the identification of the main phases and characteristics of regionalization that can form a sound basis for further, multi-country studies and crosscountry comparisons. As theoretical framework, the author refers to the works of Lorenz and Süli-Zakar as regards conceptual definition, differences and relationship of regionalization and regionalism (Lorenz, 1991;Süli-Zakar, 2005) as summarised below.

OBJECTIVES AND METHODS
Twenty-five years after the change of the political system, the qualitative analysis of longterm territorial processes in transition economies is an interesting but yet under-examined field of study that deserves attention. How could we characterize and describe the courses of twenty-five years in a single study? Could we call it regionalism, or regionalization instead?
Can we underline or contradict quantitative absorption capacity data and research results?
Based on quantitative data and key performance indicators, the numbers show good absorption capacity and an efficient allocation of EU co-financing resources. On the other hand, if we operationalize the question in a qualitative way and examine regionalism and/or regionalization processes, sub-national governance and administration capacity, pluralization, decentralization the institutionalization at regional level, we may easily discover another side of the same coin.
The objective of this paper is to determine if Hungarian regionalization/regionalism was a success story that predicts a possible future scenario for other CEE countries also.
The relevance of the research is supported by the recent elimination of the NUTS II (regional) level institutional system in the country, posing the main question if Hungary is a trendsetter in Central and Eastern Europe with this practice, or a unique case. The methodology of this contemporary, single case study is qualitative and process-based, building upon real context and empirical research.
Data and information sources are contemporary publicly available content, more specifically reports and studies, publications from organizations involved in territorial development, media, government websites and other special reports, empirical evidence and policy documents. The examined period is twenty-five years, starting from the introduction of the PHARE programs soon after the change of regime, and ending in the present . The geographical coverage is Hungary, as one of the transition economies and a Member State of the European Union.
The methods of analyzing the evidence were essentially qualitative. The research combined case study analysis and content analysis of policy and programming documents and the examined periodical. The study is explanatory and partly exploratory on the basis of the examined elements and focuses on institutionalization and administrative capacity as regards regionalization. The author identified twelve key dimensions and qualitative characteristics and established a structural classification on that basis (Table 3). Complementary to secondary sources and empirical research, two new elements of analysis were also examined, as firstly all issues (134) of the periodical Village City Region between 1994 and 2014 and their main topics and articles; and secondly the main topics of the Annual Conferences of Hungarian Regional Science Association from 2002. The main selection criterion for these two examined elements was the intention to capture and follow the relationship of regional theory (science) and practice. The periodical Village City Region is the main journal of regional (territorial) development practitioners from 1994 and it has been edited, published, and distributed to a wide audience covering all municipalities, by the all-time Ministry/Authority responsible for the coordination of regional development. Hungarian Regional Science Association is the main (scientific) forum of regional experts with a continuously growing membership, including both academics and practitioners from all territorial levels.
The contribution to the state-of-the-art is a qualitative, thorough presentation of the processes, focusing on the administrative and institutional aspects that can on one hand provide a better understanding for the next generation of experts and interested audience and secondly, can form an inspiring basis and qualitative method for further research in the field of past and future territorial processes of Central and Eastern European countries.

The V4 level
When taking a look at the Visegrad countries, as a wider geographical scope, we can find different practices for decentralization and regionalization. The following table involves some important facts and data from the V4 countries connected to regionalization.  (1996) Responsible ministry Ministry of Transport, Construction and Regional Development Ministry of Regional Development Slovakia and the Czech Republic are often characterized with a decentralized Unitarian model, and Poland with a regionalized one, while Hungary has a unitarian structure (EGTC, 2009). It can be stated that various territorial self-government and regional development systems have emerged in the V4 countries as answers to the requirements of place-specific development of EU Cohesion Policy. In the first programming period (2004)(2005)(2006), as a topdown policy pressure, the European Commission opted for centralised management of EU funding, that resulted a single (integrated) regional Operational Programme in these countries accompanied by significant disappointment in both scientific and practitioner communities.
Between 2007-2013, the introduction of ROPs (Regional Operational Programmes) for each NUTS II region ensured the prerequisites of regional capacity building and the diffusion of multi-annual strategic planning of developmental initiatives at regional and local levels (Dabrowski, 2012). According to research results of a recent study, that completed a V4 level comparison on regional development trends and institutional environment, the Czech Republic could be characterized with a learning process between 2004 and 2006; and a fullscale programme implementation between 2007-2013 with an important and growing role of regional self-governments. The territorial differences are the least significant compared to other V4 countries. Slovakia had not implemented ROP in its first cohesion period and has been implementing a single ROP in 2007-2013. Its territorial disparities are among the largest in the V4 group and Eastern Slovakia is still falling back visibly. As regards Poland, in spite of growing regional disparities between 1995 and 2009, recent development processes show relatively stable development disparities apart from a still significant difference between the capital region and the rest of the regions (Nagyházi, 2015). It is interesting to point out that while the referred author (using a rather quantitative methodology) recently labelled the Czech Republic and Poland as good examples for consensus based decentralization processes, Dabrowski (on the basis of empirical research) stated in 2013 that regional programming was undermined by strong central control in these two countries (Dabrowski, 2013.a). This contradiction illustrates well the potential difference between the research results of qualitative and quantitative research that the current paper also emphasizes.
As it is clear from literature and practice also, preliminary implementation processes (institutional and territorial regionalization) of Cohesion Policy were rather uneven in case of the CEE countries as EU policy lacked detailed description of regionalization processes (Hughes et al., 2004). Though regionalization was a mandatory exercise to be completed in connection to the EU accession, regional and supra-national priorities are not always in sync that is mainly caused by the gatekeeping role of central governments (Ghita, 2013). This phenomenon could be identified in the presented case study also. Several other authors have already identified that 'shallow' adjustment to strategic regional planning requirements and 'shallow' Europeanisation (Czrenielewska et al., 2004) may result in non-strategic use of the European Strategic and Investment Funds (ESIF) and limit the effectiveness and efficiency of EU Cohesion Policy. As an addition to this issue, European convergence versus local divergence is a phenomenon that is very characteristic in CEE countries. It means that while the peripheries of the EU have shown remarkable growth in terms of GDP, that predicts a successful convergence process, territorial inequalities within the countries are not decreasing (Török, 2013).
In case of Hungary, regionalization and the connected regional level institutionalization have been started and implemented and all of that resulted good absorption indicators. On the other hand, these processes have been stopped radically by the end of 2015. This process clearly does not contribute to a more strategic and place-specific use of ESIF. Though it was an unexpected action that lacked social and territorial consensus, it has to be highlighted that compared to other Visegrad countries, the management of regional development policies has been very frequently restructured in the central government in Hungary (Rechnitzer and Smaho 2011).

The Hungarian case study
Starting with the regulatory background, territorial (regional) development is regulated in Hungary by the Act on Territorial Development and Spatial Planning (XXI/1996). The objective of the act was to define the main tasks and regulations connected to territorial development and spatial planning and to establish its institutional system. This act was first modified in 1999, with the aim to establish the NUTS II level statistical and planning regions and the connected regional institutional and governance system, required for the accession of the country to the European Union. With the second modification in 2004, micro-regional councils as new players came into the picture. It has to be highlighted, that micro-regional players and associations have been actively self-organised themselves before 2004 also, as good examples of bottom-up initiatives. A major modification was made in 2011 when the institutional system of territorial development was significantly modified and as a result, from 1 January 2012, territorial and spatial development competences were re-located to the county (NUTS III) level. The latest modification was completed in 2013, whereas even the definition of "region" was modified. From 2016, the management of ESIF funds was relocated to the county (NUTS III level) with the elimination of the regional development agencies (RDA).
While Rechnitzer identified four phases in the analysis of regional policy and regionalization in Hungary (Rechnitzer, 2012), the author divided the examined period between the early 1990s and 2015 into three phases based on research results that will be presented in the next sub-sections ( Figure 1). Institutionalisation has been started at the regional level, including the decision-making (Regional Development Councils, RDCs) and operational (Regional Development Agencies, RDAs) institutions also. Significant administrative capacity building characterized this period that can be described with the phrase "the beginners of today are the leaders of tomorrow". At the national level coordination, the National Regional Development Council was established (1996) and an important policy document, the National Territorial Development Concept was elaborated in 1998. The number of actors has been continuously increasing, professional contacts have been intensified and several national and international events were organized, facilitating the exchange of information.
As regards international presence, an important milestone of integration into the international bloodstream was the establishment of the Representation of the Hungarian Regions in Brussels. The initiative was unique, as in the late 1990s, integrated regional representation of Member States and the connected divided infrastructure model was not typical. Lateron, this model served as precedent for the Czech and Slovak Houses (Balogh, 2008). The representation has been fulfilling pioneering tasks as providing regular reports from Brussels and organization of study tours and trainings for regional representatives. Two outstandingly important organizations should be also mentioned here, firstly the national level established. The members of TERET were the Presidents of the Regional Development Councils and its twofold objective was to enhance the preparation of Hungarian regions to EU accession and to strengthen the participation of regional actors in the allocation, and thus, absorption processes of national financial sources (VÁTI, 2005). The evaluation of the effectiveness and impacts of PHARE programs is not an objective of this study, but it should be highlighted, that the training and preparation of actors in the Hungarian territorial development institutional system at national, regional, micro-regional and local level through "learning by doing" and good practice transfer, have laid the foundations of Hungary's successful EU accession. Furthermore, the program has contributed significantly to Hungarian decentralization processes and the generation of territorial and thematic partnerships and cooperation (Polgár, 2007). With the preparation of the National Development Plan and establishment of the Managing Authorities, Intermediary Bodies and Programme Monitoring Committees, PHARE programs have reached their final aims and were officially closed.
Higher education in regional development has been started also at several institutions. As were determinate. From 2000, articles on regionalism and regionalization have appeared and a report from the first National Forum of Regional Development Agencies in 2002. The last year before the accession was characterized by outstandingly intensive activity, the launching of a new column 'News from the EU'.
In this period, a large number of practitioners have struggled with the weight of professional responsibility during the translation of "project fiches" (project summary data sheets adapted for PHARE), the preparation of policy documents and logical framework matrices, strategic programming activities and background reports for decision-making, but they met these challenges and contributed decisively to successful EU accession.
Stabilisation (2004 -2011) Hungary accessed the European Union on 1 May 2004 and this event brought significant changes in the institutional system also. The 'short' programming period between [2004][2005][2006] has been started, including the implementation of the first National Development Plan (NDP) and the single (integrated) Regional Operational Programme (ROP).
Institutionally, the regional institutional framework was accredited and has started functioning, Managing Authorities (MAs) and Intermediary Bodies (IBs) were coordinated by sectoral ministries. System operation has dredged up some problematic points that were re- As regards administrative capacity, a dynamic increase is well-identified in a national survey, reporting 298 employees as regional level staff members in 2004. Stable infrastructural background supported the operation of regional organizations, mainly regional development agencies, and the so-called Competitiveness Pole Programme was launched in 2005, as an initiative focusing on the strengthening of regional capitals as growth poles with spatial spillover effects. Though the assessment of the Pole Programme between professionals is ambivalent, two facts are indubitable: the clusters established in that period constitute the backbone of good practices of our days; and no other program similar in complexity, scale, approach and focus has been introduced since that time.
Regarding international presence, the Representation of Hungarian Regions in Brussels was established in a renewed form and represented the interests of all seven regions. One important international organisation should be mentioned in line with the specialisation processes in regional development, namely the Network of Innovating Regions in Europe In this period, the "dilution" of craft was a common opinion, the number of proposal writing companies were replicated in a short period, the community of professionals was splitting up to "Veterans" and "Titans". The specialization in innovation and research and development is an important tendency to identify, going hand in hand with the elaboration of regional innovation strategies and the establishment of Regional Innovation Councils and Agencies from 2004. The vertical tension and opposition between regional and county levels have been dissolved and a system-level (co)operation has been started that could be considered as efficient.

Pathfinding (2012 -2015)
The current period in Hungarian territorial development was started with a "kaikaku" (meaning 'radical change' in Japanese '5S methods' used in management consulting), and from that time, a continuous pathfinding can be experienced. We can lay down that several processes required immediate intervention. Among others, these processes were the excessive concentration of decision making power and competences (National Development Agency), the acceleration of subsidy allocation, the signing of the Grant Agreements and the start of preparation for the 2014-2020 EU programming period. The phasing-out and phasing-in tasks between the EU programming periods were jammed and the global economic crisis did not facilitate strategic programming and the execution of the measures and interventions either. As regards administrative capacity, there is a clear (partly re-)allocation of resources to the NUTS III (county) level and a new player, the Széchenyi Programme Office and its regional branches have been operating from November 2012 as background institution of the Prime Minister's Office. This Office operates a Representation in Brussels from mid-2013.
Regional Development Councils were eliminated from the system by 31 December 2014 and Regional Development Agencies by 1 January 2016. Counties and cities with county rank are planned to receive significant resources from TOP in the policy framework of the so-called Modern Cities Programme, coordinated from the national level. The supporting legislative background, two modifications in this relatively short period, re-arranged the institutional puzzle. The National Regional Development Council was replaced by the National Territorial Development Conciliatory Forum that forms the framework for consultations between the national and sub-national governments, down to city with county rank level. In parallel, the new EU programming period was started but until the third quarter of 2015 only a few calls for proposals were published. As a conclusion, it can be stated that the current decision of the central government is not clearly advancing Europeanisation and the 'added value' of Cohesion Policy, namely the institutionalization of strategic planning, has been at least reduced if not eliminated.
The examined periodical reacted to the changes also; several reputed authors have published debate opener articles in its issue in the second half of 2011. These writings are connected to EU programming period 2014-2020 and include also Horkay's study that urged a paradigm and paradogma change in national development policy (see also Ángyán, Boros, Csatári, Csizmadia, Faragó, Horváth, Nyikos, Szaló and Horkay, 2011). The author's identification of the phases of regionalization is supported by the sudden and drastic decrease in the issues of the examined periodical as starting from yearly 8-10 issues

Relationship of Theory and Practice
Rigid separation of regional science and practice is not reasonable; neither on organisational, nor on professional level. In most cases, colleagues of academic and research organisations play an active role in technical tasks. The Centre for Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was established in 1984 (currently it is called Centre for Economic and Regional Studies) and it launched its scientific periodical in 1987, with the title 'Space and Society'. As its President of the Editorial Board, György Enyedi formulated in the foreword of the first issue, Space and Society "is not distributing the research results of a single scientific discipline, but a problem: it examines the relationship of space and society from the aspects of different scientific disciplines, with a specific approach." (Enyedi, 1987).
As regards the first phase, the 'Age of Heroes', Village City Region periodical was issued for the first time in 1984, and the Hungarian Regional Science Association was established in 2002. Master level education has been started in 1994 and the PhD program from 1996, as guarantees for permanent supply of new graduates. Science and practice have engaged on several points, such as strategic programming, the preparation of policies and programs (Horváth, 2014) and participation in the training programmes.
In the period of 'Stabilisation' regional science and practice have been cooperating closely. With the EU accession, the integration to European scientific (research) are(n)a has been strengthened, cross-border Hungarian research has emerged as a strategic objective and research of regional processes in Eastern and Southern-Eastern Europe has become a determinate element. The number of cooperative research and joint research projects has increased continuously and their partnership was widened with economic actors.
'Pathfinding' could be characterized by centralization; according to Horváth, territorial development has become a weightless policy, almost all prerequisites of decentralized operation were eliminated and most of the results of twenty-five years of science organization was wasted (Horváth, 2014). The elimination of regional level from territorial development institutional system has raised questions connected to the reasonableness of regional sciences as a separate scientific discipline. As Nemes Nagy writes in Enyedi's scientific biography; "The Regionalist" was arguing in several essays for the existence and role of regional sciences as a separate discipline (Enyedi, 2011, Nemes-Nagy, 2012. As benchmarking data for further cross-country comparisons the author refers to Szabó who counted more than 20 PhD defenses in regional science between 2008 and 2013 in Hungary and identified 50 departments at 16 higher education institutions in 14 settlements where more than 50 lecturers participate higher education of regional development. The main problems the authors highlighted were the ever changing expectations from the practical side (and thus the suitable curriculum), the deficiencies in practice-oriented education, and in overall, the adaptation problems of higher education to the dynamically changing policy implementation environment (Szabó, 2013).

CONCLUSIONS The Hungarian case study
It can be stated that regionalization has been started in Hungary in the early 1990s with a major contribution of the PHARE program. From that time, decentralization could be observed, while from 2012, there is a tendency towards (re)centralization. Competences formerly allocated and strengthened at the regional level, including ESIF management, are now restructured and relocated to the historical county (NUTS III) level. Regional (NUTS II) level institutions, the Regional Development Councils and Agencies, have been abolished in the near past. While in 2004, professionals were mostly characterized by miracle expectation, in 2014, there have been uncertainties and question marks. The global financial and economic crisis slightly, the changing Hungarian political-social environment, significantly influenced regional processes in the country, those phases and main characteristics are summarized by the author in Table 3.  (1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003) 2. Stabilization (2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011) 3. Pathfinding (2012)(2013)(2014)(2015) Territorial processes  (2004-2006; 2007-2013) EU and national (2007-2013; 2014-2020) Functions statistical-planning regions formulation specialisation (innovation) specialisation (local economic development) Relationship of theory and practice formulating cooperation, HAS regional centres, Space and Society, Village City Region, Hungarian Regional Science Association good, efficient cooperation, relatively decentralized system (re)centralisation, pathfinding, "innovations" in governance Vertical/ horizontal relationship vertical competition, horizontal cooperation, counties vs regions operable and operating system but competition between regional centers horizontal competition on county and settlement levels, expectations, plans Source: own construction from public data, 2016 As regards regional processes in the last 25 years in Hungary, they could be characterized as regionalization rather than regionalism, and could be considered as the most important institutionalized attempt towards regionalization in Hungary in the twentieth century. If we consider absorption capacity and quantitative indicators, Hungary could be classified as a good example, but if we look beyond statistics and examine qualitative characteristics, with special respect to Europeanisation, regional level institutionalisation and administrative capacities, it can be stated that the results are ambivalent. At this point, it has to be highlighted that the presented frequent changes and unplanned decisions resulted a situation that some authors described as 'the house built next to its foundation' (Pálné Kovács, 2004;Perger, 2010). Thus, the current process could have also been evaluated as a corrective action if there was a well-prepared substitute or alternative system. On the other hand, the scheduling of the institutional change was relatively optimized as it followed the completion of strategic programming for 2014-2020.
Methodologically, the main tendencies and milestones can be well-identified and followed through the application of the qualitative methodology and the comparative set of characteristics identified by the author. The growing specialization at the EU policy level towards local economic development, innovation, competitiveness and job creation have been identified at the Member State level also in the case study, so a direct and strong effect of EU policy on the MS and sub-national level was justified.
The V4 level -Future scenarios When examining possible future scenarios in the V4 countries, new global level regionalization agendas should also be considered, such as metropolitan regions, cityregionalism, agglomeration economies, 'virtual regionalization' without being exhaustive; that are not in line with the administrative region concept, casting a question mark over the notion of cohesive regional development under the conditions of competitiveness (Herrschel, 2010). The definition of regions as 'places of spaces' or, rather the 'places of flows' as raised by Castells, should also be reconsidered (Castells, 1999).
At the EU policy level, it has to be stated that the new focus of Cohesion Policy is largely placed on growth creation (local (LAU) level) and as growth is a cumulative process that tends to concentrate both spatially, economically and socially, new ways should be explored in order to promote cohesion in Europe. Growing regional disparities between the capital city(region) and the rest of the country is a typical CEE, and thus V4, phenomenon. As a conclusion, it can be stated that the changing focus of EU Cohesion Policy has a potential to advance processes also in the CEE region, that are not supporting regionalization in its traditional understanding, but could generate and strengthen new conceptual avenues. In this meaning, the Hungarian case could be considered as the first sign or appearance of these new concepts.
Poland has the strongest institutionalized and administrative regions in the V4, as a regionalized unitarian country, so it is hardly probable that its regionalized system will be revised and/or modified before 2020, especially if we take into consideration the own financial income, property and assets of the voivodships. On the other hand, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, as decentralized unitarian countries, have a significant potential to follow the Hungarian example in the forthcoming years, and revise their regional institutional system, with special respect to the relocation of the competences connected to the management of ESIF funds. With strengthening specialization towards local economic development, innovation, competitiveness and job creation, even the rethinking of inner and external peripheries and the concept of multi-node (city-region) cross-border economic zones could be widely introduced. The 'Europe of the Regions' concept has been clearly shifted to the 'Europe of Cities/Cityregions' direction. The answer to the basic question if Hungary is a trendsetter or a unique case in the V4, or with a wider scope, in the CEE region as regards regionalization, depends largely on the capability of EU Cohesion Policy to meet its current and future global level challenges.