Concentrating or Centralising Public Services? The Changing Roles of the Hungarian Inter-municipal Associations in the last Decades

Abstract

The article reviews the transformation of the roles of municipalities, inter-municipal associations and the central government in the light of local public services. Firstly, theoretical and international backgrounds of the topic are shown. Secondly, the article presents the changing roles of Hungarian municipalities and inter-municipal associations in the field of local public services and administration. Here, a tendency of concentration can be observed from the disintegration in the early 1990s up until now. Thirdly, the outcome of the transition from a decentralised to a centralised system is analysed, i.e. the nationalisation and centralised administration of the former municipal local services.

Judicial Review in Hungary: The Turmoil of Organisational Changes through the Lenses of Procedural Law

“…It was also a factual necessity that led to this change, as in the Government's bureaucracy-reduction programme, a heavy centralisation process took place, which resulted in the merger of most government agencies into the ministries, which did not want to deal with day-to-day second instance and supervisory procedures. 17 As the government agencies are however set up on two instances, these agency competencies could be transferred to them and the first instance procedures again transferred from government offices to selected district offices, these second instance procedures could be retained in quite a lot of fields of administration. This readjustment of competences was reflected in the initial text of Article 116(2)(a) GAPA, which, as an exception, allowed for appeals against the decisions of the district office.…”

Opportunities of the Intervention of the Central (Regional) Government in the Decisions and Operations of the Local Governments in Hungary

“…Кроме этого, в случае несоответствия конституции нормативные акты органов местного самоуправления могли быть оспорены любым лицом путем подачи иска в общественных интересах (actio popularis). Иные управленческие решения могли быть оспорены в судах общей юрисдикции 9 . Помимо ненормативных актов, регулирующих субъективные права и обязанности, в соответствии с Законом об административных процедурах решения органов местного самоуправления могли быть оспорены только главой административного регионального управления (графства), действующего в качестве надзорного органа, при обязательном соблюдении предварительной уведомительной процедуры.…”

“…По итогам реализации правового контроля, а также судебного и конституционного рассмотрения решений органов местного самоуправления выявилась необходимость проведения реформы регулирования в этой сфере на основе положений Конституции Венгрии и Закона CLXXXIX 2011 г. о местном самоуправлении в Венгрии 13 . 9 Rozsnyai, K. Közigazgatási bíráskodás Prokrusztész-ágyban. Budapest : ELTE Eötvös Kiadó.…”

“…Для этих целей правительство должно иметь соответствующую и хорошо структурированную административную систему. Изменения в этой области можно выявить, проанализировав ежегодный бюджет Министерства человеческих ресурсов, которое в настоящее время несет ответственность за предоставление государственных услуг 36 .…”

Polish Experience in the Search for the Optimal Model of Performing and Financing Metropolitan Tasks

“…This problem has been identified and analysed in the world literature for many years (Hulst & Montfort, 2007;Teles, 2016;Swianiewicz & Teles, 2018). In the last decade, detailed research into the essence and legal nature of cooperation, its motives and barriers as well as problems regarding the organisation, functioning and results of intermunicipal cooperation has been conducted in Western European countries, including France (Boyer, 2012), Germany (Stork, 2012), Switzerland (Steiner & Kaiser, 2018), Austria (Matschek, 2011) and the Netherlands (Allers & de Greef, 2018), Southwest, Spain (Bel et al, 2013), Portugal (Camões et al, 2021), South, that is, Italy (Marotta et al, 2018) and Slovenia (Rakar et al, 2015), and North (Wiberg & Limani, 2015) and Central and Eastern Europe, including Hungary (Balázs, 2014;Hoffman et al, 2016), Poland (Kołsut, 2015;Dolnicki, 2018;Ofiarska & Ofiarski, 2021), the Czech Republic (Bakoš et al, 2020) and Slovakia (Grešová, 2016). Intermunicipal cooperation is also the subject of numerous studies in non-European countries, such as the United States (Warner et al, 2021), Canada (Spicer, 2015) and various Latin American countries (Yurisch et al, 2019;da Silva et al, 2020).…”