GEOSTRATEGIC CONTEXT OF NETWORKING OF NATIONAL MINORITY COMMUNITIES IN TERRITORIAL COOPERATION PROGRAMMES OF THE EU

The participation of Hungary and Hungarian regions outside of Hungary in transnational and interregional programmes within the framework of the third objective (European Territorial Cooperation) of the European Union's Cohesion Policy 2007-2013 is an indicator suitable for analysing the international networking activity of Central European national minorities. These programme areas are very well in alignment with the settlement areas of Hungarians and thus it provides a great opportunity for cooperation in the field of regional developments. The study on the participation of Hungarian organizations in and outside of Hungary in the programming period of 2007-2013 shows; however, that Hungarian organizations outside of Hungary only partly utilize their networking potential and they worked with organisations of the mother country in only a few projects. Policies on cooperation may contribute to further utilize this networking potential.


INTRODUCTION
This study analyses the networking potential and performance of Central European national minority 11 communities through their project activity in transnational and interregional territorial cooperation programmes of the EU 12 .
Central Europe has an especially colourful native population comparing to other macroregions of Europe. In the seven Central European countries east from Germany (Austria, 11 Although the Central European minorities cannot be strictly divided into groups based on their history, territory, language or identity, national minorities are understood here as minority groups who have national collective consciousness and this is considered as crucial component of their community forming (Szarka, 1999 Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia) and in the three culturally, historically connected regions (Transcarpathia, the westernmost part of Ukraine; Transylvania, the western part of Romania; Vojvodina, the northern part of Serbia) there are 107 national, ethnic minority groups with more than a thousand people (Szarka, 1999).
Typical of majority ethnic groups of certain countries that they appear in the macro-region's other countries as national minority groups. All these minority groups are native; they are not related to recent migration processes.
European integration has opened up a new and unique opportunity for the cooperation of the same ethnic groups living in different EU member states. As a result, it is worth examining what kinds of international relations are formed among the same ethnic groups in Central Europe where the national minorities are closely attached to their cultural identities.
The territorial cooperation programmes of the EU, inter alia, are those programmes that create opportunities for this kind of cooperation because the main objectives of territorial cooperation as defined by the EU are overcoming the negative effects of borders, maximising synergies and promoting joint solutions to common problems.

Spatial patterns of populous Hungarian minority communities in countries neighbouring
Hungary are probably the most typical representation of this colourful Central European national mosaic. Therefore, the research outlined in this paper investigates the networking ability of Central European minority groups through the case of Hungarians.

Objectives of this study
Analysing European policies and evaluations of territorial cooperation programmes, a high networking potential can be assumed in case of Central European national minority communities living in different countries. Some territory-related European policy intentions support their cooperation implicitly. Logics and experiences of existing European territorial cooperation mechanisms also imply their intensive networking possibilities.
This study aims to examine the potential and performance of territorial cooperation of national minorities living in different Central European countries. An intensive international cooperation potential can be hypothesized among minority communities sharing a common ethnic background but living in different countries. This networking potential shall be relatively higher than the one detected among different groups without an ethnic consciousness. The populous and geographically broadly scattered Hungarian communities could establish institutional structures in many countries with a potential for taking part as partners in projects financed by the above mentioned European programmes.

Methods of this study
The Hungarian language is fundamentally differs from other Central European languages, similarly to the Hungarian naming traditions. Therefore, project partners suspected to be related to Hungarian minority communities are effectively and confidently identifiable in project databases not requiring extended field studies.
The territorial cooperation programmes support three types of cooperation: cross-border, transnational and interregional projects. The transnational and interregional programmes provide a great opportunity for the Hungarian communities for strengthening the cooperation as the programme areas are very well in alignment with the settlement areas of Hungarians.
They are fully or partly cover the eight countries and the potential beneficiaries include any public institutions representing the participating countries. It is of special importance that the main decision-making bodies of the programmes are Monitoring Committees consisting of delegates from every Member State which serves the objective character of decision-making.
In the absence of previous similar Hungarian or European studies this study developed its own data base and methodology. The data base developed by the study is based on the data of project's name, lead partner's and partners'name, their address and the project budget. Based on these data the main target group of the research can be confidently identified, i.e Hungarian project partner organisations of the neighbouring countries related to Hungarian ethnic communities. The analysis is also limited by these types of data of the European database (e.g. budget for each project partner is not available).
Data base of this study was analysed mostly through simple quantitative data comparison.
In case of some projects with partners suspected to be related to Hungarian minority communities, qualitative information purchasing was applied as well to verify their relevance.

European territorial policy context of development cooperation of national minorities
However there is no European development policy message addressing explicitly native national minorities, there are some territorial policy logic that can effect on development cooperation of these minorities.
The Territorial Agenda 2020 of the European Union (TA2020) identifies cultural heritage as part of territorial capital and identity as well as cultural assets as crucial factor for wellbeing and economic prospects which offer unique development opportunities. The policy document also emphasizes that improvement of regional and local identity by strengthening awareness and responsibility of local and regional communities towards their cultures and other unique values is of great importance. According to Territorial Agenda 2020, territorial cooperation can create a critical mass for development, decreasing economic, social and ecological fragmentation, increasing mutual trust and strengthening social capital. From this point of view, Central European minority ethnic groups possess great development potential because of their strong regional and local identities with a special spatial dimension of living in different countries.
Common cultural heritage crossing borders is also an important feature of Central European national minorities. TA2020 calls for local, regional and trans-regional management of cultural heritage of regions. Third objective of Cohesion Policy in 2007-2013 can also be considered as a tool for the management of cultural heritage on these scales, especially for the trans-regional scale. The transnational and interregional cooperation can provide new development perspectives by the utilization of cultural diversity and also the reunification of common cultural assets (Radvánszki-Sütő, 2011). The networking performance of territorial cooperation programmes were examined in the last ten years by several research projects but none of them indicated ethnic correlation (Jančič, 2005, Davoudi, 2005Böhme, 2005;Zaucha -Szydarowski, 2005;BBR, 2009;Tatasciore, 2007;Kochanska, 2009;Mirwaldt-McMaster-Bachtler, 2009;Ploszaj, 2013).

Evaluating European territorial cooperation in relation to national minorities
However, according to Böhme (2005) Spatial patterns of Central European national minorities are represented typically on these latter scales having an emerging importance.
ESPON TERCO report also describes bottom-up approach on cooperation between cities and regions of different countries. Contact and networking features of cooperation lead the scientists to the concept of 'paradiplomacy' which means the involvement of subnational governments in international politics (Keating and Hooghe, 1996). The study refers to an example of French and British towns as first forms of bottom-up territorial cooperation developed mainly as a result of municipal activism in the postwar period. They have been engaging in their own foreign diplomacy since the 1940s in the framework of town twinning.
According to experts, European integration provides subnational actors with many opportunities to achieve their political or economic objectives independent of national channels. Assuming regional politicians are autonomous actors, territorial cooperation can be described as a bottom-up initiative where regional actors aim to cooperate because it serves their interests (ESPON TERCO, 2012).
Central European national minority communities provide excellent opportunities to realise such cooperation. Networking of groups sharing common ethnic background in different countries can stimulate other actors of these countries to get into contact each other. This latter process can also be supported by multiple national identities occurring frequently among Central European national minority communities (Szarka, 1999).

General networking performance of Hungarian minority communities
Exploring the overall programme activity of the countries hosting the Hungarian minority groups helps to evaluate further the performance of Hungarian minority communities.
Concerning the activity of the neighbouring countries the performance of Slovakia measured by number of partners per population is above the average, that value of Romania is around the average. The value of relative participation in transnational programmes is higher than that in the interregional progammes for the three countries examined (Fig. 1).

Figure 1 Number of partners per population in those transnational and interregional territorial cooperation programmes where Hungary is involved (per 10 million inhabitants) (2007-2013) Romania, Slovakia and Hungary
Source: by Péti -Hoffmann, 2016 (source of data: www.keep.eu) The proportion of Hungarian participants remained below the proportion of the Hungarian minority in the given neighbouring country in case of every examined country (Tab. 1). While the participation rates of organisations of the neighbouring countries related to Hungarian ethnic communities in Romania were 4% and in Serbia 1.5%, those in Slovakia was quite low and there was no Hungarian participation in Ukraine. This low-intensity Hungarian participation was highly concentrated. There were some experienced partners participated in more projects in this type of projects for example the Council of Harghita County. There were 17 projects which involved Hungarian partners from the neighbouring countries and that was implemented by only 11 partners. None of the Hungarian partners from outside of Hungary (not even the experienced ones) were lead partners in the projects.

Networking of Hungarian communities in the framework of territorial cooperation programmes
Number of projects involving Hungarian partners from both Hungary and outside of Hungary represents an extremely low proportion of all the projects involving Hungary (Tab. 2), however the programme areas, especially the South East European, fully cover the areas of the Carpathian Basin where Hungarians live. In this sense these programmes could be suitable for Hungarian-Hungarian cooperation especially because they are not limited geographically like the cross-border cooperation. Hungarian-Hungarian cooperation 13 projects only occurred in the South-East European programme area, but even there only 5% of the projects could be considered that type. It is only one project (SEEMIG) implemented in the South East European programme which involved Hungarian partners from more than two countries: Hungary, Serbia and Romania.
Otherwise only bilateral Hungarian connections were observed in projects, and Hungary (partners from Hungary) represented always one of the countries in these bilateral contexts.
13 Hungarian-Hungarian cooperation can be desribed as cooperation between a Hungarian partner from Hungary and a partner from the certain neighbouring country who is related to its Hungarian national minority Still, surprisingly, partners from Hungary have worked together more frequently with non-Hungarian partners coming from the neighbouring countries than with Hungarians (Tab. 3.). Only 4.7% of the projects had Hungarian-Hungarian cooperation which means the cooperation of a Hungarian partner from Hungary and a partner from a given neighbouring country related to its Hungarian national minority. In case of some countries that percentage reaches the proportion of the Hungarian population, but never significantly exceeds that as would otherwise be expected. The Hungarian-Romanian cooperation projects produced the best results in that regard: 8.5% of all the projects had Hungarian-Hungarian cooperation, but even that is just two percentage points higher than the proportion of the Hungarian population (this is caused mainly by the active participation of Council of Harghita County). The Hungarian-Hungarian cooperation was present in just 0.9% of all the Hungarian-Slovak cooperation projects, which is far lower than the Hungarian population ratio in Slovakia. The Hungarian-Hungarian cooperation was present in 2.9% of the total Serbian-Hungarian projects which is also lower than the Hungarian population ratio of 3.6%. No such projects could be identified in Ukraine.
In Hungary there were no institutions specialized in Hungarian-Hungarian cooperation. This is confirmed by the fact that the 36 project participation involved nearly the same number of partners from Hungary (which means that one partner participated in only one project). As opposed to Hungary there were institutions specialized in Hungarian-Hungarian cooperation in the neighbouring countries, illustrated by fact that the 16 project participations were carried out by just 10 Hungarian partners (e.g Council of Harghita County).
Nearly half of the projects with Hungarian-Hungarian cooperation were led by an institute from Hungary (7 lead partnership roles). In these cases networking among institutes using the same working language (Hungarian) could contribute to creating project proposals. However this could not be a guiding principle of generating these projects, as the vast majority of their partners were not from Hungary and had no Hungarian minority background.
The participation of Hungarian national minority communities was probably entirely initiated by other project partners from Hungary. Partner organisations of the neighbouring countries related to Hungarian ethnic communities only participated in projects having also partners from Hungary (with only one exception).

DISCUSSION
In order to understand the results better it is worth taking a closer look at policy context of these programmes in Hungary. Although the participation of partners from Hungary in the analysed programmes is outstanding in European comparison, the participation rate of ministries and central institutions -also by European comparison -low (rate of central institutions among partners from Hungary: 4.1%; the same in case of Austria: 7.4%; Romania: 8.3%; Slovakia: 6.7%). Among the projects having Hungarian-Hungarian dimension there were projects both with and without the participation of central administrative partners. In the examined programming period no significant policy on stimulating Hungarian-Hungarian partnerships in these programmes can be identified. In this manner results above reflect an objective overview on the organic participation and networking abilities of minorities. As a consequence, the Hungarian-Hungarian cooperation analysed can be definitely interpreted as bottom-up initiatives and thus they are a more "paradiplomacy" type of collaboration.
According to the results, communities in countries of national majority (in our case Hungary) are the ultimate drivers of organising the cooperation among the same national communities of different countries. Hungarian minority communities were only able to take part in projects with a partner from Hungary, from a country where Hungarian consist majority.
Networking among communities with a same national background living in different countries is not really an important driver of project planning in the examined programmes.
At least it was the case at the populous Hungarian communities and in Hungary: choosing a Hungarian partner was not as frequent as to choose a partner with other national and language background from the same country. There was no partner in Hungary specialized in involving partners from Hungarian minorities. Even out of Hungary only one experienced partner institute could be identified with a kind of specialization in taking part projects possessing also a Hungarian-Hungarian dimension.
Summarising results, the detected networking activity of Hungarian communities in the examined programmes can be considered lower from certain aspects than it could have been expected according to great cooperation potentials of this population. This is even more surprising by taking into account the significantly high activity of partners from Hungary.
The sociogeographical context of the Hungarian minorities can be an explanation for these figures. A really significant, even dominant proportion of the Hungarian minorities live in rural communities (Péti -Szabó, 2015). International networking ability of rural community's institutions are obviously lower than the average. This is especially the case of Hungarians living in Slovakia, where the relatively lowest programme activity was identified.
Reasons behind the detected performance shall obviously be very various requiring further investigations, first of all in fields of institutional and financial ability, national identity attitudes in Hungary and outside, decision making procedures of programmes and the timeline of the networking activities. The performance of other Central European national minorities would be worth investigating as well.
In spite of the needs for further investigations, the current results can unambiguously verify the importance of building policies and development actions more intensively and strategically on the existing networks of national minorities. The possibility of cooperation among national minority groups should be utilized in these programmes which could be supported by direct national and European policy as well.

CONCLUSION
In Central Europe many native communities share the same national and language background and live in different countries. These Central European national minorities can have a high potential in building development networks among countries, possibly higher than communities without this special feature. According to the research of this study, networking of Hungarian communities of different countries in projects financed by territorial cooperation programmes of the EU is not significantly high, it can also be considered relatively low from some aspects. Policies and development actions shall more intensively and strategically be built on the existing networks of Central European national minorities.