Spatial Characteristics of Eu-Funded Tourism Investments in the Northern Great Plain Region (Hungary) in the 2014-2020 Budget Period

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present the territorial characteristics of explanation of European Union funding for tourism-related developments in the Northern Great Plain region (Hungary) in the 2014-2020 programming period of the European Union. We relied fundamentally on the website “palyazat.gov.hu” as our source, which provides information on the number of grant applications submitted and those that were successful. There are very significant differences between counties and settlements in terms of the application activity and the focus of the applications. Firstly, the specificities of the counties that make up the Northern Great Plain region had a significant impact on the region’s performance in case of national-level projects. Secondly, hand the influencing factors include the commitment of the leaders of the individual counties and settlements to tourism, the impact of the conditions set out in the calls for applications, as well as the role of political lobbying.

Local economic development strategies in a medium-sized city on the European periphery: a path to become an economic center of Eastern Central Europe importance

“…First, it has a special role in the urban network of Hungary: traditional town hierarchy studies (Beluszky and Győri, 2004;Kocsis and Lenner, 2012) and analyses measuring innovation orientatedness (Rechnitzer et al, 2014), economic competitiveness (Vida, 2022), and cultural and creative industries (Kézai and Rechnitzer, 2022) undoubtedly place Debrecen to the group of towns immediately following Budapest. According to official national spatial development documents, Debrecen has a dominant economic role in the outer ring of cities, located at a greater distance from Budapest, and one of its important tasks is to fulfill its international gateway role (Badar et al, 2023;Csapó et al, 2023). Second, Debrecen has been governed by the same political force, the conservative FIDESZ, since 1998 and is therefore seen as one of the party's strongest bastions.…”