Report on the international workshop „Regional Socio-Economic Processes in Central and Eastern Europe - 20 Years in Transition and 2 Years in Global Economic Crisis" : Budapest, April 4-5, 2011


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Report on the international workshop „Regional Socio-Economic 
Processes in Central and Eastern Europe – 20 Years in Transition 

and 2 Years in Global Economic Crisis” 

Budapest, April 4–5, 2011

The fi rst scientifi c encounter of geographers from Visegrad countries and their neighbours 
was organized in Budapest. The idea of the workshop evoked in the host institute, the 
Geographical Research Institute Hungarian Academy of Sciences, while further fi nancial 
support was aff orded by the International Visegrad Fund and the Department of Social 
and Economic Geography of the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Not only the press 
but also the politicians paid close att ention to the event: in her welcome speech Mrs. Edit 
Szilágyi Bátorfi, the V4 national coordinator of Hungary emphasized the moral and 
political importance of this scientifi c forum for all the Visegrad Group. 

CHRONICLE

Hungarian Geographical Bulletin 60 (2) (2011) pp. 221–227.

Participants of the ReSEP CEE workshop, GRI HAS



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The almost fi ft y invited lecturers arrived from ten diff erent countries and spoke 
nine vernaculars from post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. Twenty years aft er the 
change of communist regime human geographers could evaluate the recent processes and 
discuss the possible new directions of cooperation. The purpose of the conference was to 
refresh the former scientifi c connections and to build new ones. In a globalising world the 
eastern neighbour areas of the European Union have been being upgraded. In addition, 
the Visegrad Four (V4) might form a kind of bridge between East and West. This goal was 
to be reinforced by the workshop with the main objective of gett ing a deeper insight in 
socio-economic processes having taken place in the CEE countries and in the wider sur-
roundings and their interpretation from geographical aspects. According to its general 
conception the conference was to provide a chance to specialists of the region representing 
various disciplines of geography to exchange ideas about numerous regional, structural 
and ethnic problems that had emerged  in the last two decades.

The main goal of the workshop, to open the fl oor to geographers from neighbour-
ing countries, was att ained: participants arrived from Austria, Germany, Poland, Czech 
Republic, Slovakia, Belarus, Ukraine, Russian Federation, Romania and Hungary. All the 
partners (not only colleagues from the V4 countries) supported the idea of preparing a 
website of the workshop in all the languages of the participants to enhance the multifarious 
cultural character of the region. As a result of the participants’ eff orts therefore the general 
conception and the detailed programme could be read in ten diff erent languages (htt p://
www.mtafk i.hu/ReSEP_CEE.html) which highly contributed to the value of this project. 
Although the offi  cial language of the conference was English, a session was also held in 
Russian to encourage communication among the Russian speakers as well.  

Károly Kocsis, director of the GRI HAS opened the two day long conference. The 
workshop had two plenary sessions, where the representatives of the leading geographi-
cal institutions introduced their professional profi le and on-going research projects. On 
behalf of the V4 countries Antonín Vaishar off ered a brief overview from the Geonics, 
Brno, Grzegorz Węcławowicz from the Geographical Research Institute Polish Academy 
of Sciences, Warsaw; Vladimír Ira from the Institute of Geography, Slovak Academy of 
Sciences, Bratislava; and Károly Kocsis the GRI HAS. The second plenary session, chaired 
by Vladimir Kolossov, was entitled to the V4 neighbours' geographical institutes. From the 
western neighbours Peter Jordan introduced the Institute of Urban and Regional Research 
from Vienna, while Isolde Brade talked about the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, 
from Leipzig. Regarding the eastern neighbour countries the participants had the opportu-
nity to get acquainted with the following institutions: Belorussian State University Faculty 
of Geography represented by Ekaterina Antipova, the Institute of Geography Ukrainian 
National Academy of Sciences by Grygorii Pidgrushnyi and the Institute of Geography of 
Russian Academy of Sciences by Vladimir Kolossov. 

In the aft ernoon the fi rst scientifi c session was the Russian speaking one, chaired 
by József Nemes-Nagy, about the actual demographic and economic issues in the post-Soviet 
region. Grygorii Pidgrushnyi presented a summary about the actual industrial processes in 
Ukraine, Liudmila Fakeyeva highlighted the most important demographic shift s in Belarus 
in the last twenty years, while Mikalai Kabylinski talked about the actual characteristics of 
labour market in Belarus. Summarizing this session its chairman called the att ention of the 
audience to the divergent development trajectories of these post-soviet countries.  

The second session was dedicated to actual socio-geographical processes in the 
Visegrad Countries, chaired by Vladimír Ira. Viliam Lauko presented the spatial patt ern of 
higher education in Slovakia in the last twenty years; István Tózsa gave an overview about 
the spreading of info-communication technologies in the region; Mikulas Huba summarized 



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the recent environmental challenges Slovakia had to face; Janusz Górecki revealed some 
spatial characteristics of the business sector in Poland. 

In the aft ernoon the foreign participants also were invited to a bus sightseeing 
tour round Budapest, guided by Zoltán Kovács (GRI HAS).

On the second day seventeen presentations were held in four scientifi c sessions. 
The fi rst session focused on rural areas and peripheries chaired by Peter Jordan. The open-
ing presentation by Thilo Lang off ered an in-depth and remarkably systematized overview 
on the theoretical frame of peripheralization. Antonín Vaishar presented a case study on a 
peripheral part of the Czech-Polish border zone. Magdalena Dej and Robert Guzik analysed 
the spatial accessibility of rural areas in Poland. Based on abundant statistical and fi eld work 
data Magdalena Dej studied the accessibility of secondary education facilities, while Robert 
Guzik evaluated the public transportation system in the Western Carpathians in Poland. 

The second session chaired by Isolde Brade was devoted to the urban areas. 
Grzegorz Węcławowicz gave a lecture on the eff ect of economic crisis upon Central and 
Eastern European urbanization processes. László Jeney off ered an overview on the state 
of CEE countries in the European city competition. Then Kostyantyn Mezentsev analyzed 
the changes in urban regions and urban network in Ukraine. The session was closed with 
a presentation by Petr Klusáček about the revitalization processes and challenges of a 
brown-fi eld area in the Czech Republic.

Grzegorz Węcławowicz opened the fi ft h session dedicated to the investigation of 
eff ects of global economic crisis, although the fi rst exciting presentation by Márton Czirfusz 
rather aimed at showing how the post-socialist economies have been portrayed in contem-
porary art. Volodymyr Anderson evaluated the clusterization potential in diff erent areas 
of Ukraine. Olga Shuvalova’s presentation focused on the energy sector in East Germany. 
The following papers were dedicated to the spatial eff ects of the crisis in Hungary and 
Romania. Hajnalka Lőcsei focused on the regional eff ects of the crisis in Hungary, while 
Egon Nagy put the emphasis on the nationwide trends in the economy of Romania and 
governmental responses. 

The Russian Federation and the European Union was the topic of the last session, 
chaired by Volodymyr Anderson. A lecture by Pál Szabó on the spatial structure of the EU, 
a paper by Andreas Wust about changing border regimes and an exciting presentation by 
Ferenc Gyuris about changing spatial disparities in Russia closed the workshop. 

Active discussions followed each session, especially in connection with the coun-
tries or territories that have not been recognized offi  cially by the UN (aft er the presentation 
of Anna Shmytkova). These conversations also emphasized the importance of events as this 
conference to give chance, among others, to harmonize divergent opinions.

The presentations will be available on the website of the conference mentioned 
above; in addition they will be published in a volume of papers during this summer. The 
hosts of the workshop hope that this initiative will be organized later as a regular meeting 
of geographers from V4 and neighbouring countries. The leading geographical institutes 
of Visegrad Countries consider the compilation of a joint publication: an atlas entitled 
“Visegrad Countries in Maps”. 

Coordinators of the ReSEP CEE workshop, GRI HAS 

Ágnes Erőss and Dávid Karácsonyi