Old Obstacles and New Opportunities in Regional Cooperation of Local Governments

The accession of Hungary to the European Union created vast opportunities for the development of infrastructure in the area of environmental protection. But the financial resources almost always depend on the availability of some kind of regional cooperation or territorial integration. In my paper, I study the experiences gained regarding the establishment and operation of regional cooperation; the reasons of the difficulties of operation during short-term cooperation and the future possibilities for cooperation in the long run on the basis of a quantitative analysis of the „Szeged Regional Waste Management Programme” ISPA/Cohesion Found project. It was to establish a project region of 250 thousand inhabitants, which region is the beneficiary of the European Union support. In order to analyse the reasons of the defaults of operation, I proposed a hypothesis based on the interviews conducted with project managers and experts involved in the project studied. I conducted a questionnaire survey in order to check the validity of the hypothesis by way of a quantitative method. The analyses of the questionnaires of the representatives of the 32 municipalities appeared to partly confirm the hypothesis, in other respects they extended beyond the statements of the hypothesis. Although past traditions of natural cooperation based on mutual benefit had died out during the forty years of socialism, European Union projects, however, forced new types of regional cooperation, i.e., project regions, to develop shortly after the change of the regime.