Annual Report Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic 2008

2.
in motion in 2008 with interest. The construction
projects laying down road and rail infrastructure
in the border regions, which lag behind the needs
of the dynamically growing economic and trade
cooperation, remained a focus point.
Hungary
The Treaty on Good Neighbourhood and Friendly
Cooperation between the Slovak Republic and the
Republic of Hungary signed on 19 March 1995 in
Paris continued to represent the fundamental
framework for the development of bilateral relations
in 2008. The implementation of its provisions
is ensured by 12 joint committees. The activities
of the joint committee on minority issues
and the joint committee on cross-border cooperation
must once again be commended.
The implementation of the joint programme of
the Prime Ministers of Slovakia and Hungary entitled
Common Past, Common Future in the Mirror
of Common Projects served as the basis for the
realization of bilateral projects in 2008. The majority
of the 14 specific tasks included in this programme
were fulfilled in the course of 2008. For
example, the Ministers of Health signed a memorandum
on cooperation between their ministries
on fighting cancer. Slovakia’s Deputy Prime Minister,
Dušan Čaplovič, along with the Minister heading
the Office of the Prime Minister of Hungary,
Péter Kiss, organized a conference on the conditions
for utilizing European funds for cross-border
programmes. The Foreign Affairs Ministers signed
an agreement on the status of the joint award of
the Ministers of Foreign Affairs for contributing to
the development of Slovak-Hungarian relations.
As part of the Cross-Border Cooperation Operational
Programme the Banská Bystrica Self-Governing
Region successfully submitted an application
to the European Regional Development Fund
for the funding of the construction of two bridges
over the Ipeľ River on the common state border.
Mutual relations in minority issues were influenced
by the situation in the village of Mlynky
(Pilisszentkereszt) in the spring of 2008, when the
local self-government decided to evict the local
Slovak organizations from the Slovak House and
only after the interventions of the Hungarian and
Slovak governments were preparations started
for the construction of a new Slovak House.
The meetings of the Deputy Prime Minister,
Dušan Čaplovič, with the Minister heading the Office
of the Prime Minister of Hungary, Péter Kiss,
were particularly significant in terms of contact
between the Slovak and Hungarian representatives
in 2008. Both politicians met four times and
Negotiations in Budapest,
December 2008
the Slovak representation have shown that EU membership
has a strategic and positive impact on Slovakia.
Cooperation within the V4 has proven its worth even
though the practical results are not remarkable and
we are not always capable of reaching agreement on
a joint strategy. Speaker of the Parliament Pavol Paška
actively participated in the meeting of the V4 Speakers
of Parliaments on the issue of the Treaty of Lisbon
in May in Prague. The Foreign Affairs Committee also
devotes continual attention to V4 partners.
Relations with the Czech Republic are currently undoubtedly
of a very high quality. What has to be done
in order to reach similar levels in relations with other
neighbours, for example Hungary?
With the exception of Ukraine all our neighbours
are EU members and, with the exception of Austria,
they are also NATO Member States. All our neighbours
are members of the CoE and the OSCE. With certain
legitimacy, we can therefore state that we share a
common continuity of values and common goals with
these countries. At the same time, however, we share
a developmental or historical discontinuity with our
neighbours, which projects itself in various forms and
intensity into our current relations.
The current state of Slovak-Czech relations is very
good and conflict-free at a political level, despite the
fact that the governing political representations do not
share an identical political orientation. Dis agreements
and disputes over the distribution of common property,
over who was subsidising who in the common
state, or who has the right to use the symbols are currently
only of interest to historians.
The Czech community in Slovakia (approximately
50,000 citizens) and the Slovak community in the
33