Pannon EGTC

On 25 January Gábor Mayer held a meeting at the university and met with regional mayors, before holding a press conference on the development directions of Baranya at the county hall.

At the event, the State Secretary emphasized that the primary task of regional development is to reduce the gap between underdeveloped and developed regions. He pointed out that the ministry has a role in coordinating the development of sectoral policies in certain areas, including health, infrastructure, economic development and transport.

He mentioned TOP Plus as one of the most important instruments for regional development, which will provide around HUF 2,000 billion between 2021 and 2027 to support the development of Hungarian regions.

In addition, special programmes will be launched to help certain regions in need of development to catch up. The South Transdanubian Regional Development Model Programme has been developed for the counties of Somogy, Tolna and Baranya, which are still lagging behind the national average. László Őri, President of the Baranya County Municipality, said that he and his guest had reviewed the most important elements of the model programme for Baranya. He said it was not an exaggeration to say that Baranya and the region itself were among the victims of the regime change, the region could not really find itself and could not take its rightful place which it would have deserved due to the hardworking local communities. He recalled that the model programme to reduce territorial disparities was launched under the leadership of former government commissioner Éva Mikes.

He said that, based on recent trends, the region had managed to break the deadlock between 2010 and 2022: thanks to government investment in the job market and economic development policies, unemployment in the region had fallen from 13 to 4 per cent. The industrial output has increased from EUR 280 billion to EUR 960 billion over the past decade, said László Őri, adding that a real turnaround will require breaking the region’s “isolation” by which it was characterised during the past decades.

“We now have good hopes that Baranya and Pécs will be among the winners of regional development and economic policy in the upcoming decades. The infrastructure development, which is a priority of the model programme, is already in process,” he pointed out. Among others, the government official mentioned the new section of the M6 motorway up to the border, the new public transport hub in Mohács, the development of the Pécs-Pogány airport and the preparation of the expressway connecting Pécs and Kaposvár. 2023 was the year of a turnaround in Baranya after a long period, with the region moving from second last place in per capita by industrial production to at least the lower middle of the midfield, he pointed out. 

The Drava cross-border cooperation region of South Transdanubia has been identified as a priority area, which is part of the programme area covered by the HUHR CBC (Interreg VI-A Hungary-Croatia 2021-27) programme (in Hungary Baranya, Somogy and Zala counties, on the Croatian side Bjelovarsko-Bilogorska, Virovitičko-Podravska, Požeško-Slavonska, Osječko-Baranjska, Vukovarsko-Srijemska, Međimurje, Varaždin and Koprivničko-Križevačka counties are included). With Croatia’s accession to the Schengen Area, the Drava Basin provides a unique large-scale regional opportunity in the Baranya Triangle and the areas of influence of Slavonia and Osijek. This is one of the strongest  potential connections to the Western Balkans. The development and catching-up of the border regions requires the implementation of a complex, coordinated regional development programme, in the implementation of which the Pannon EGTC, as an organisation covering the entire border section and working specifically for this purpose, is a key player.

Source of the article: Pannon EGTC