THE PERSPECTIVES OF AGRICULTURE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

role of agriculture, increasing food prices, rural development policy, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

ADAPTATION OF STATISTICAL MATCHING IN MICRO-REGIONAL ANALYSIS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION

Agricultural production and agricultural policy has many special dimensions. The production structure, income positions, and labour input have large regional disparities, the production intensity is not homogenous in space, and farms have different risk factors and market possibilities in the different regions of Hungary. Land use and production technology also varies largely, in many regions farming is competitive, highly specialized with big corporate farms, while other regions have small individual farms with mixed production structure and less concentration in land use. There are no direct data for spatial analysis less aggregated than NUTS 3 level. Only the data of agricultural census and administrative database for direct payments are available at settlement and microregional level, but these databases do not provide information of farm income. The income statistics either cannot be disaggregated to micro-regional level (agricultural accounts) or are not representative at this level (FADN). The administrative database of the Paying Agency contains the land use data and limited livestock numbers for all farms receiving direct payments. The FADN database contains a large accountancy dataset for a low number of farms. Statistical matching combines these two databases and provides a possibility for detailed regional analysis using estimated data.micro-regional, statistical matching, administrative data, FADN, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development,

VIDÉKFEJLESZTÉS ÉS A KÖRNYEZETIPAR KAPCSOLATRENDSZERE AZ ENDOGÉN FEJLŐDÉSBEN

Napjaink egyik legégetőbb és egyben legizgalmasabb kérdése, hogy milyen lehetőségek mentén szükséges a fejlesztéseket megvalósítani Magyarországon az Európai Uniós integrációnk alapján. Hogyan és miként tudjuk a csatlakozás előnyeit minél jobban kihasználni és a várható nehéz helyzeteket átvészelni, hogyan tudunk teljes jogú tagként élni és megélni Európában. Az európai gazdaságba való integrálódásunk történelmi esélyt kínál a periferikus helyzetünkből történő kitörésre. Az integráció előnyei nem automatikusak, alapvető alkalmazkodásra van szükség. Az európai együttműködés és integráció eszméje már a múlt század közepe óta megfogalmazódott, tartalma és a keretei az adott kor körülményeivel összhangban változott időről időre. Felmerül a kérdés, hol a helyünk Európában? Az európai integráció nagy kihívást jelent a magyar gazdaság számára, de az eredményes európai orientáció, az integrációba illeszkedés nélkülözhetetlen előfeltétele az Európai Unió rendszeréhez történő pontos, a fejlesztési irányokat meghatározó tervek megléte. Napjainkra a mezőgazdaság már nem az egyetlen (bár még meghatározó) alkotó része a vidéknek, hiszen a vidékgazdaság fejlesztése jóval összetettebb és bonyolultabb rendszert alkot. Figyelembe véve az EU integráció részeként működő támogatáspolitikát, annak folyamatos átalakulásának trendjeit, jól látható, hogy a strukturális átalakulások, a vidéki iparfejlesztés, az élelmiszergazdaság, az infrastruktúra javítása, a társadalmi problémák megoldásainak keresése, a falusi turizmus lehetőségeinek kutatása mellett egyre fontosabbá válik a környezetipar is, melynek fejlesztése jelentős szerepet kap a vidékgazdaságban. ---------------------------------------------------------------- One of the most important and exciting issues of today is to see along what potentials the developments should be realized in Hungary considering our EU accession. How can we take the advantages of the accession as much as possible and how can we survive the expected difficult situations, in what ways can we be and behave as full EU members? The integration into the European economy provides a historical chance for us to break out from our peripheral status. The benefits resulted from the integration are not automatic, there is a need for adaptability. The idea of European cooperation and integration was created already in the middle of the last century, its content and frame, however, have changed from time to time according to the circumstances in the different periods. A question is raised: where is our place in Europe? The European integration poses great challenges on the Hungarian economy, but the successful European orientation and the integration require plans that are adjusted to the system of the European Union and which define exact development guidelines. Agriculture has become a determinant (but not the only one) player in the rural economy by now, since the development of rural economy is a much more complicated and comprehensive system. Considering the system of funds and subsidies of the European Union, its continuous changing and the trends of transformation, it is clear that in addition to structural transformation, the development of rural industry, food industry, the development of infrastructure, the solution of social problems, the discovering of potentials in rural tourism, green industry has become more and more important. The development of that sector plays significant role in rural economy

CONVERGENCE CRITERIA AND THEIR FULFILMENT BY THE COUNTRIES OUTSIDE THE EURO-ZONE

In order to ensure the sustainable convergence required for the achievement of economic and monetary union (EMU), the Treaty sets five convergence criteria which must be met by each Member State before it can take part in the third stage of EMU and hence before it can adopt the euro. Compliance is checked on the basis of reports produced by the Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB). The criteria are: • government finances (the Commission when drawing up its annual recommendation to the Council of Finance Ministers examines compliance with budgetary discipline on the basis of the following two criteria): o the ratio of annual government deficit to gross domestic product must not exceed 3% at the end of the preceding financial year [http://europa.eu/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/l25014.htm]; o the ratio of government debt to gross domestic product must not exceed 60% at the end of the preceding financial year; • there must be a sustainable degree of price stability and an average inflation rate, observed over a period of one year before the examination, which does not exceed by more than one and a half percentage points that of the three best performing Member States in terms of price stability during the year preceding the examination of the situation in that Member States; • there must be a long-term nominal interest rate which does not exceed by more than two percentage points that of the three best performing Member States in terms of price stability. The period taken into consideration is the year preceding the examination of the situation in the Member State concerned; • the normal fluctuation margins provided for by the exchange-rate mechanism must be respected without severe tensions for at least the last two years before the examination. [http://europa.eu/scadplus/glossary/convergence_criteria_en.htm]

A MEZÅGAZDASÃG FEJLESZTÉSI LEHETÅSÉGEI MEGYEI VIZSGÃLATOK ALAPJÃN

A vidékfejlesztési politika célja az, hogy kihasználva az ország kedvezÅ‘ ter-mészeti adottságait, a belföldi és nemzetközi piacokon versenyképes mezÅ‘gazda-ság jöjjön létre, amely képes jó minÅ‘ségű alapanyagokkal ellátni a feldolgozó-ipart, tisztességes és kiszámítható jövedelmet biztosít a gazdálkodóknak és foko-zódó mértékben figyelembe veszi a környezetvédelem, valamint az egészséges táplálkozás követelményeit. Vizsgálataink alapján megállapítható, hogy a hatékonysági követelményhez igazodni képes „versenyszféra†mellett létezik a mezÅ‘gazdaságban egy korláto-zottan versenyképes termelési rész is. Ebbe tartoznak részben olyan kisméretű gazdálkodó egységek, amelyek inkább a tulajdonreform keretében létrejött kényszervállalkozásnak tekintendÅ‘k vagy jövedelem kiegészítést szolgálnak, részben olyan gazdaságok is, amelyek kedvezÅ‘tlen természeti és földrajzi adott-ságok között kénytelenek gazdálkodni. E korlátozottan versenyképes gazdasá-gokkal kapcsolatban a szerkezetátalakításhoz vezetÅ‘ út, illetve lehetÅ‘ségek pél-datára is más, mint a versenyképes mezÅ‘gazdaság esetében. A cél az, hogy sajá-tos támogatási formák járuljanak hozzá a szociális gondok, a túlzottan nagy jö-vedelemkülönbségek enyhítéséhez, illetve az intézkedések hatására a kormány járuljon hozzá a környezetbarát mezÅ‘gazdálkodás, a szociális foglalkoztatás, il-letve az alternatív megélhetési formák ösztönzéséhez. Making use of the country’s advantageous natural endowments, the goal of regional development policy is the creation of a rural economy that is competitive on both national and international markets, which is able to supply the processing industry with good quality raw materials, guarantee a predictable income for the farmers and which increasingly takes into account the requirements of environmental protection and healthy nutrition. Based on our investigations, it can be stated that alongside the competitive sphere, which is able to adapt to efficiency requirements, there exists in the rural economy a production area of restricted competitiveness. This area includes partly those small scale production units, which in the context of property reform should in reality be considered “forced enterprisesâ€, or which serve as income supplementation and partly those farms, which have to operate under unfavourable natural or geographical conditions. In regard to these farms with restricted competitiveness, the road to restructuring and the opportunity paradigms also differ from those for the competitive rural economy. The goal is for particular forms of support to contribute to the reduction of social problems and the excessive income gaps, as well as for the government, in response to the measures, to contribute to environmentally friendly farming, to social employment and to the stimulation of alternative forms of livelihood.vidékfejlesztés, kényszervállalkozások lehetÅ‘ségei, jövedelem különbség csökkentés - opportunities of forced enterprises, rural development, decrease of income differences, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Political Economy,

A MEZŐGAZDASÁG FEJLESZTÉSI LEHETŐSÉGEI MEGYEI VIZSGÁLATOK ALAPJÁN

A vidékfejlesztési politika célja az, hogy kihasználva az ország kedvező ter-mészeti adottságait, a belföldi és nemzetközi piacokon versenyképes mezőgazda-ság jöjjön létre, amely képes jó minőségű alapanyagokkal ellátni a feldolgozó-ipart, tisztességes és kiszámítható jövedelmet biztosít a gazdálkodóknak és foko-zódó mértékben figyelembe veszi a környezetvédelem, valamint az egészséges táplálkozás követelményeit. Vizsgálataink alapján megállapítható, hogy a hatékonysági követelményhez igazodni képes „versenyszféra” mellett létezik a mezőgazdaságban egy korláto-zottan versenyképes termelési rész is. Ebbe tartoznak részben olyan kisméretű gazdálkodó egységek, amelyek inkább a tulajdonreform keretében létrejött kényszervállalkozásnak tekintendők vagy jövedelem kiegészítést szolgálnak, részben olyan gazdaságok is, amelyek kedvezőtlen természeti és földrajzi adott-ságok között kénytelenek gazdálkodni. E korlátozottan versenyképes gazdasá-gokkal kapcsolatban a szerkezetátalakításhoz vezető út, illetve lehetőségek pél-datára is más, mint a versenyképes mezőgazdaság esetében. A cél az, hogy sajá-tos támogatási formák járuljanak hozzá a szociális gondok, a túlzottan nagy jö-vedelemkülönbségek enyhítéséhez, illetve az intézkedések hatására a kormány járuljon hozzá a környezetbarát mezőgazdálkodás, a szociális foglalkoztatás, il-letve az alternatív megélhetési formák ösztönzéséhez. Making use of the country’s advantageous natural endowments, the goal of regional development policy is the creation of a rural economy that is competitive on both national and international markets, which is able to supply the processing industry with good quality raw materials, guarantee a predictable income for the farmers and which increasingly takes into account the requirements of environmental protection and healthy nutrition. Based on our investigations, it can be stated that alongside the competitive sphere, which is able to adapt to efficiency requirements, there exists in the rural economy a production area of restricted competitiveness. This area includes partly those small scale production units, which in the context of property reform should in reality be considered “forced enterprises”, or which serve as income supplementation and partly those farms, which have to operate under unfavourable natural or geographical conditions. In regard to these farms with restricted competitiveness, the road to restructuring and the opportunity paradigms also differ from those for the competitive rural economy. The goal is for particular forms of support to contribute to the reduction of social problems and the excessive income gaps, as well as for the government, in response to the measures, to contribute to environmentally friendly farming, to social employment and to the stimulation of alternative forms of livelihood

THE PERSPECTIVES OF AGRICULTURE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

We have started to carry out series of investigations on the relationship between agricultural and regional development in order to see whether in those countries – where agriculture plays important role in the economy at the moment – this tendency must be maintained or not. How can agriculture contribute efficiently to the GDP growth and to the increase of the standard of living? Can/should we recommend any other development alternatives in those countries or agriculture must be further developed? We wanted to overview what tendencies can be observed in the case of agricultural product prices and whether those tendencies, i.e. the increasing prices, endanger the food supply and whether they have close relation with the appearance of alternative energy sources. We also intended to find out how we can link and harmonize the regional and rural development measures of the EU and the objectives of the CAP especially in those regions which are lagging behind. In this study we tried to summarize the major facts and conclusions of the first phase of these researches, focusing on primarily the agricultural tendencies in the world and in the EU, which can serve as a good basis for further analyses to set such aims which serve both regional and rural development

CONVERGENCE CRITERIA AND THEIR FULFILMENT BY THE COUNTRIES OUTSIDE THE EURO-ZONE

In order to ensure the sustainable convergence required for the achievement of economic and monetary union (EMU), the Treaty sets five convergence criteria which must be met by each Member State before it can take part in the third stage of EMU and hence before it can adopt the euro. Compliance is checked on the basis of reports produced by the Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB). The criteria are: • government finances (the Commission when drawing up its annual recommendation to the Council of Finance Ministers examines compliance with budgetary discipline on the basis of the following two criteria): o the ratio of annual government deficit to gross domestic product must not exceed 3% at the end of the preceding financial year [http://europa.eu/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/l25014.htm]; o the ratio of government debt to gross domestic product must not exceed 60% at the end of the preceding financial year; • there must be a sustainable degree of price stability and an average inflation rate, observed over a period of one year before the examination, which does not exceed by more than one and a half percentage points that of the three best performing Member States in terms of price stability during the year preceding the examination of the situation in that Member States; • there must be a long-term nominal interest rate which does not exceed by more than two percentage points that of the three best performing Member States in terms of price stability. The period taken into consideration is the year preceding the examination of the situation in the Member State concerned; • the normal fluctuation margins provided for by the exchange-rate mechanism must be respected without severe tensions for at least the last two years before the examination. [http://europa.eu/scadplus/glossary/convergence_criteria_en.htm].economic and monetary union, new member countries, analyses, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, International Development, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

ADAPTATION OF STATISTICAL MATCHING IN MICRO-REGIONAL ANALYSIS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION

Agricultural production and agricultural policy has many special dimensions. The production structure, income positions, and labour input have large regional disparities, the production intensity is not homogenous in space, and farms have different risk factors and market possibilities in the different regions of Hungary. Land use and production technology also varies largely, in many regions farming is competitive, highly specialized with big corporate farms, while other regions have small individual farms with mixed production structure and less concentration in land use. There are no direct data for spatial analysis less aggregated than NUTS 3 level. Only the data of agricultural census and administrative database for direct payments are available at settlement and microregional level, but these databases do not provide information of farm income. The income statistics either cannot be disaggregated to micro-regional level (agricultural accounts) or are not representative at this level (FADN). The administrative database of the Paying Agency contains the land use data and limited livestock numbers for all farms receiving direct payments. The FADN database contains a large accountancy dataset for a low number of farms. Statistical matching combines these two databases and provides a possibility for detailed regional analysis using estimated data

ENGINEERING FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT CLUSTERS AND CONCENTRATION OF BUSINESSES IN REGIONS OF SOME EUROPEAN COUNTRIES AS TOOLS FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Abstract. In our paper we made an overview on the literature about the creation and role of clusters and concentration of economic activities in the development of regions in Europe. Based on data available, we tried to find the correlation between the welfare, the quality of life and the clusters (especially in the knowledgeintensive sectors). In our research we assumed that the concentration of a sector in a region can have influence on the quality of life and that higher knowledge-intensive sectors of manufacturing and services have greater contribution to welfare. During research two main questions may arise: After how many years can we see beneficial effects on quality of life if a region starts to specialize. And: Can quality of life react flexibly to the changes in economy? After our research we got to the conclusion that there is a time shift in this phenomenon, the correlation is not linear and the changes are not elastic. We assumed that knowledge-driven economy has greater effect on quality of life than traditional economy but this cannot be proven generally. Moreover, regional specialties in labor market and industrial traditions seem to have great impact. We collected the data from the Eurostat database. The sample data give the opportunity to calculate the labor based location quotient (LQ), Herfindahl index and Dissimilarity index as well. All the three indices can show us the same effects that we are interested, but we have chosen LQ for our research. Eurostat has a so called high-tech industry and knowledgeintensive service database, which was used and filtered to the employment data in order to calculate the labor based LQ. The database lasts from 1994 to 2008 and shows the employment in the different knowledge intensive sectors on regional levels in 33 countries. The aim of our research was to find out how much the clusters/economic concentrations affect the development of regions and to try to define possible development ways for the future. Keywords: specialization of industries, location quotient, quality of life, labor market change. Introduction The goal of the paper is to measure the impact of the actions of economic policy on the quality of life, especially the relationship between regional specialization and welfare. The contribution of these factors to quality of life is difficult for several reasons, as observed in our parallel studies about quality of life. Therefore, we compared the most common index of welfare the per capita GDP with the index of regional and sectoral specialization measured by the labor based location quotient. We can easily accept that among scarce resources not every initiative can be supported, which can elevate welfare, so we should define the sectors with the greatest contribution to the quality of life. Through our investigation we examined which sector's concentration brings the greatest effect on local per capita GDP. The literature specifies those branches and sectors (traded, basic, export branches) [1] that can lead a region into success. Porter If we accept the theory of innovation driven development and the statements of Porter [2] about traded cluster, then we should only focus on the impact of these branches on the quality of life. Ketels and Sölvell [3] have made already these kinds of studies about the regional economic performance and clusters. In a broader perspective it is conceivable that small local clusters with non-traded activities (such as craftsmanship or culinary products) can connect local suppliers and producers and these clusters can have impact on their surrounding region as it was observed by tourism by Szanyi et a