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- Title: HUNGARY: HUGARY EU ACCESSION PROFILE
- Date: 27th April 2004
- Summary: PAN HAJNALKA AND PARTNERS AT WORK AT THEIR PESTI PORTRE PR COMPANY SLV/SV OF OFFICE, HAJNALKA BRINGING PAPERS, CLOSE UP OF HAJNALKA TALKING TO PETER (2 SHOTS) BUDAPEST, HUNGARY (RECENT) (REUTERS) DAY SHOTS SLV OF BUDAPEST - GREEN BRIDGE WITH OLD YELLOW TRAMS SLV/SV OF TRAM AND PEOPLE GETTING OFF (2 SHOTS)
- Embargoed: 12th May 2004 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: BUDAPEST, MISKOLC, VILLAGE OF VECSES AND HIGHWAY OUTSIDE BUDAPEST AND ZAHONY BORDER POST AT HUNGARIAN-UKRAINIAN BORDER, HUNGARY
- City:
- Country: Hungary
- Topics: International Relations,Industry
- Reuters ID: LVADI9UA5GUCJBM48X3GKKQPUGUZ
- Aspect Ratio:
- Story Text: The Paris of Eastern Europe, as its inhabitants like to describe it, has wasted no time or money in restoring its old elegance and grandeur.
Adorned in a new finery and donning its party shoes, Budapest is regaining its old image, lost during the grey times behind the Iron Curtain.
Gundel restaurant can be said to be mirroring the fate of the Hungarian capital. Much like the rest of Budapest, it has been through three changes of image in the past 100 years as one regime replaced another.
One of the most elite establishments in this part of Europe that still boasts catering for kings and queens in the early 20 century, Gundel turned into a murky state-owned eating place under the Communist rule.
In 1991, two American businessmen of Hungarian origin reached a settlement with the Gundel family and acquired the once-famous restaurant with the goal of raising it to its former glory. The citizens of Budapest now like to showcase it as a paradigm of success.
Social and economic changes since the fall of Communism have been profound. For young Hungarians the opening up of their country meant first and foremost new career and business opportunities.
Thirty-four year-old Hajnalka Balla works as a sommelier at Gundel two nights a week. She learnt the sommelier trade aboard luxury liners cruising the Caribbean in mid-1990s when such opportunities became available to young Hungarians.
Hajnalka's day job is at an advertising company, owned by her husband and two other partners. Small, but successful, the firm provides advertising services for Hungarian and international companies based in Hungary - another industry that blossomed in the wake of changes.
EU membership support among Hungarians is still relatively high, although painful reforms that were undertaken in order to meet the Maastricht criteria curbed some of the initial enthusiasm.
In a referendum in April 2003, on whether Hungary should join the European Union, 84 percent voted Yes, although voter turnout was only 46.
For Hajnalka and her husband Peter the main factor about joining the EU will be psychological, the sense of belonging to a community they feel Hungary has always been a part of.
"I am happy about joining the European Union. I feel this will be a unifying thing and I am glad I will be part of it,"
Hajnalka said.
Her husband is also in favour, but sceptical of further changes after May 1.
"I think May 2 will be like any other morning and we will only be able to decide in 10 years-time whether this was good or not. But, at the referendum, this was definitely the better option.
Hajnalka comes from Miskolc, a grim industrial town in Northern Hungary, and is especially sensitive to the effect higher cost of living which the accession to the Union is expected to bring, may have on those who live in Hungary's poorer regions.
"It will be good for people in Budapest, but where I come from in Northern Hungary the situation will not be any rosier after the enlargement," she said.
The town of Miskolc used to be a heavy industry centre with a large steel factory employing 22,000 people.
Almost 20,000 of them lost their jobs as a result of aggressive privatisation and loss of the old Soviet markets.
"We are already in debt, and what will now happen to us, us poor people, where are we all going to go," Laszslo Balogh, a former steel factory worker said, standing on the hillside above the old factory.
Recent news that most European countries plan to limit access to the EU labour market is considered a psychological blow to citizens in all formerly communist countries, who identified the freedom to work throughout the union as one of the chief attractions of joining.
Recently appointed Hungary's EU Commissioner, Peter Balasz is realistic about what lies ahead, but not pessimistic: "So, nobody believes anymore that its going to be heaven, a fantastic change. Hungary applied for EU membership ten years ago, on the first of April 1994, so we asked the hand of the princess ten years ago. After ten years of waiting you are a bit less enthusiastic than in the first one or two years.
People already know what it is."
Analysts think it is the agricultural sector of Hungarian economy which will be most at risk from being exposed to greater competition on the EU's internal market.
Thousands of farmers set up road blocks on roads throughout Hungary last month demanding higher subsidies from the government.
The centre-left cabinet, which is struggling to rein in a big budget deficit, has little room of manoeuvre to satisfy the demands of farmers, who claim Hungary's EU accession in May will bring about a wave of bankruptcies in the farm sector.
Hungarian farmers, just as producers in other EU newcomers will only get 25 percent of the direct subsidies due to current EU producers, with the sum to be raised gradually.
The cash-strapped government faces the choice of handing out more subsidies, which will likely be only a temporary remedy to the inefficient sectors overproduction problems, or letting EU accession take its toll.
There are 250,000 registered farmers in Hungary, with the sector generating about four and a half percent of total GDP.
Securing the Unions new Eastern borders against a potential tide of illegal immigrants is another issue Hungarian government will have to deal with.
Of all the new members, Hungary will have the longest border with non-EU neighbours - some 1,100 kilometres (684 miles) shared with four countries - Ukraine, Romania, Serbia-Montenegro and Croatia.
Keeping this in mind, the EU will give Budapest 148 million Euros in the next three years to help the nation tighten its borders with everything from mobile CO2 sensors to patrol boats and all-terrain vehicles.
Immigration figures indicate that countries like Hungary are primary targets for smuggling groups transporting those fleeing poverty and persecution.
More than 10,000 people crossed illegally into Hungary and on to Austria in the past six years. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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