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Both at national and EU level, the differentiation of specific territorial units is a key issue in development policy. The objective of the delimitation at the highest legal level is to mitigate territorial differences; it is intended to provide support for the delimited (beneficiary) territorial units. Benefits (e.g. the rate and intensity of support) are fundamentally influenced by development and growth opportunities, so the methods and the results of delimitation are both politically and professionally sensitive. This is particularly important for rural areas and rural development, because the beneficiaries' delimitation - or lack thereof - is most affected by these regions. Hungary has been operating and developing a delimitation system since the '90s, the elements of which are at community level can serve as a model, and can be well-utilized. For this purpose, the paper presents the regulatory starting points and principles of spatial delimitation, the statistical methods used so far, the range of data used, and the problems that can be associated with the methods and data used so far. The authors propose a data set and a calculation method that more faithfully reflects the real situation of territorial development, which would enable development resources to better contribute to reducing territorial disparities.

This research paper analyses shifts in the Visegrád Group's (Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) identity as a regional integration platform and, in particular, links between Europeanization, illiberalism and V4 geopolitical identity. This provides a background for investigating contested ideas of European integration that discursively frame Central Europe's 'illiberal regionalism'. I suggest that this regi onalism does not represent a coherent or stable political project. Tensions involved in this regionalist shift are exemplified by 'revolutionary' Hungarian and Polish national conservative agendas and their interaction with the more measured pragmatism of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This analysis supports the argument that V4 cooperation represents an adjustable geopolitical space that reflects Hungarian and Polish cultural politics of national identity as well as more issue-oriented Czech and Slovak concerns. Moreover, V4 cooperation remains salient in order to prevent the political marginalization of its members.

The microbrewery market in the Czech Republic has experienced a tremendous boom, especially in the last 15 years. Recently, people have liked to try new things, and there is a growing demand for non-traditional types of beer offered by these companies. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, microbreweries have had to reduce activities or even close facilities. The paper aims to examine microbreweries' perception of competition threat, promotion, and activities during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Czech Republic. We examined the differences related to four microbreweries' characteristics: the location of the facilities, the scale of the operations, the annual volume of beer production, and the number of years in business. The questionnaire survey was carried out in 105 microbreweries. We used statistical methods of Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA, Mann-Whitney test, and Pearson's Chi-square test to prove research working hypotheses. The results show that microbreweries do not consider the threat of competition high. The beer production volume factor influences this perception of competition. We found that enterprises make the most use of websites and customer referrals in their promotions. We proved that the use of the web depends on the range of business activities. Finally, we analyzed the direct impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on microbreweries. The vast majority of the enterprises partially kept the operation running. Interestingly, some enterprises have taken advantage of the current situation to diversify their activities and look for new opportunities. The main factors that varied between enterprises, in this case, were the range of activities and years in business. The paper's originality is related to the first attempt to analyze the COVID-19 impact on the breweries during the lockdowns and government restrictions.

The study summarises the main features of the urban structure of Romania, with a special focus on metropolitan development. Romanian settlement development since the regime change has been essentially urban-focused. Concentrated social, economic and environmental problems are identified at the urban level, which have facilitated the regional division and the designation of regional centres. These specific development areas have identified urban and rural problems for which coherent solutions have been sought. Urban areas of attraction are considered subordinate to the centre, with the exception of tourist destinations, where the geographical location of natural, historical, architectural or artistic assets opens up development opportunities for rural areas independently of cities. The Romanian system provides a starting point for further reflection on the spatial categories of Hungarian spatial development, as it considers the urban-rural functional area as the basic unit of development policy and does not rigidly adhere to the existing administrative structure. The paper presents a specific example of a regional centre, the gateway cities, as a changing development path.

The importance of cities throughout history is indisputable. Their allocation of economic, cultural and political power, their spatial organization functions are impressive, and their role in social reproduction reached a milestone in 2008, when more than half of the world's population was considered urban. Today, the urban population is still growing. Small towns are extremely diverse in terms of economic power and society, but their numbers and population base do not justify their dominance in the urban network. There have been intense waves of urbanization across Europe, with the scope of formal cities widening and the scope of functional cities closing. Grouped by population category, there are more than 7,000 small towns in Europe, almost two-thirds of the countries' urban settlements are small towns. This is particularly true in Central- and Eastern-Europe, where, due to delayed urban development, there is a combination of welfare suburbanization and urban depopulation, as well as forced-generated movements from the big cities to smaller towns. In our study, we present the main characteristics of population change in small towns in Hungary. We examine spatial and functional differences in the population dynamics of small towns. The aim of the study is to show the spatial distribution of the settlements identified by prosperous suburbs and shrinking cities by illustrating the changes in the population dynamics of the Hungarian small towns population over the last almost twenty years.

The educational indicators are an important basis for spatial researches focusing on regional development. Border areas provide special conditions for educational attainment, but the levels of aggregated results are worse in general. Different distance categories and given sections of Hungarian border areas are separated in order to detect the altering development paths of the complex educational attainment index (CEAI). This complex indicator combines the number of people with high school graduation and with diploma in the ratio of the 20 years or older population (with a weighting procedure included). Border areas are generally characterized by worse educational attainment values than the national average, but during the last more than six decades, significant convergence of data could be observed, in which the dominance of large towns is decisive. For this reason, suburbanization significantly impacts the spatial pattern of educational attainment in the border zones. Most parts of the settlements are below the national average, however general conditions are better in the case of the Austrian border section. However, the previously assumed continuous development of this border section has not been confirmed by our analysis.

The emergence of cross-border suburbanisation is based on the geographical proximity of a large city and the unrestricted permeability of state borders. A social group, the ‘transnational borderlanders’, is emerging (Martinez, 1994), who use the territory of both states on both sides of the border daily, e.g. they live on one side and work on the other. In our case, a cross-border suburbanisation has developed, with Bratislava residents moving to nearby villages in Hungary. The open border is a prerequisite for their daily life, and they took a risk when they bought a property in another country. The study examines how the closing of borders during the COVID-19 epidemic affected the lifestyle of Slovak citizens who settled in Hungary and commuted to Bratislava and the new situation of the cross-border area. To this end, a questionnaire survey and interviews were conducted in four settlements in Hungary inhabited by Slovaks. The study summarises the results of these surveys and concludes that the temporary closure of borders did not have a significant impact on the satisfaction with cross-border lifestyle, and the willingness to move. In fact, there are signs that the lockdown has dissolved the previously entirely Bratislava-centric way of life (shopping, using services, registering an address, etc.).