Hungarian International Development Cooperation: Context, Stakeholders and Performance

This paper explores the domestic and international context of Hungary's emerging international development policy. Specifically, it looks at three factors that may influence how this policy operates: membership in the European Union (EU) and potential ‘Europeanization’, Hungary's wider foreign policy strategy, and the influence of domestic stakeholders. In order to uncover how these factors affect the country's international development policy, semi-structured interviews were carried out with the main stakeholders. The main conclusions are: (1) While accession to the EU did play a crucial role in restarting Hungary's international development policy, the integration has had little effect since then; (2) international development policy seems to serve mainly Hungary's regional strategic foreign policy and economic interests, and not its global development goals; and (3) although all the domestic development stakeholders are rather weak, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) still seems to play a dominating role. Convergence with European requirements and best practices is, therefore, clearly hindered by foreign policy interests and also by the weakness of non- governmental stakeholders

Income Disparities in the European Union

Abstract The inequality of disposable income in the European Union (EU) is higher than the official figures by Eurostat suggest and matches the level of US inequality. It is a major driver of migration and relocation of production within the EU, which are concerns for low-skilled people in the richer member states (leading to nativist votes and Brexit). Relative inequality has been declining due to the increased growth of poorer economies in Central and Eastern Europe (so-called ‘beta convergence’). However, absolute inequality is unlikely to decline for many years. Fighting EU-wide inequality requires long-term growth accompanied by appropriate expansionary EU policies