Paper Titles & Abstracts

The values and priorities of the official international development cooperation (IDC) policy of the new EU member states in general, and of Hungary in particular, clearly show the influence of the main donor organizations these countries acceeded to in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The countries, however, also added an element specific to them, which by now started to make its way into the priorities of the EU's IDC. This priority is: sharing the experiences these countries gained through their political, economic and social transitions, with countries embarking on the road to democracy, market economy and an open society. Hungary refers to this element already from 2001, so from the very start of its IDC, and following the Arab Spring, it puts increasingly more emphasis on it. Naturally, though, this transition experience does not only lie with the state authorities, but also with the civil society. Therefore, this paper will examine what the so-called transition experience mean to either of them and how it is used both in the official development cooperation policy of Hungary and in the activities of Hungarian non-governmental development organizations (NGDOs). We will discuss whether and how the official and civil activities complement each other in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the current system.The paper will build on the extensive analysis of primary sources - official Hungarian and EU documents and interviews with representatives of NGDOs - and will conclude with recommendations concerning how the existing system could be developed in the present European context.