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University of Debrecen, Centre for Agricultural Sciences and Engineering, Faculty of Applied Economics and Rural Development H-4032 Debrecen, Böszörményi str. 138. Today ICT (Information and Telecommunication Technologies) has an essential role in some sectors of the economy. Its development has sped up so much that if somebody is not able to follow this development there is no chance in the economy. It is effectual on both micro and national economic level. A nation's elementary interest is to make the opportunity to recourse of the more developed ICT, on micro level the enterprises' interest is to take advantage of it. Furthermore the knowledge-based society comes to the front more and more, because it is a national economic aim, so without reference to conditions ICT is must at everybody's disposal. So, it has to be available in a little village, as much as a city. If a country can build a suitable infrastructure for the population, it has a huge benefit on international markets and in competitiveness. But in order for the construction of an infrastructure, the first is to ensure the financial sources. EU offers many opportunities on calls for proposals with this object and the most important thing, that we can make the best of it. ICT infrastructure development has been realised on many settlements in Hungary, but not always on the most suitable places. In my opinion, an indicator system would be worthy to develop, by which it would be possible to specify where the development of ICT infrastructure is reasonable – where the use of development funds will be most efficient. Currently applied indicators are deform, they do not reflect the real regional situation, because these had not been worked out to our environmental conditions, but are suitable for only at macro-level, for uniform international comparison, and do not consider many things. Naturally, these are suitable for making international rankings, although such an indicator system would be useful, which shows the development of our own country, at regional level too. ; Az Információs és Kommunikációs Technológiák (IKT) ma már a gazdaság valamennyi szektorában nélkülözhetetlen szerepet töltenek be. A fejlődésük annyira felgyorsult, hogy ha valaki nem képes ezt a fejlődést követni, nincs esélye a gazdaságban. Ez mind mikro, mind pedig nemzetgazdasági szintre érvényes. Egy nemzetnek alapvető érdeke, hogy megteremtse a lehetőséget a minél fejlettebb IKT igénybevételére, mikro szinten pedig a vállalkozásoknak érdeke, hogy ezzel a lehetőséggel éljenek. Továbbá egyre jobban előtérbe kerül a tudásalapú társadalom, mint nemzetgazdasági célkitűzés, azaz mindenki számára rendelkezésre kell hogy álljanak e technológiák körülményektől függetlenül. Azaz egy kis faluban ugyanúgy jelen kell lennie, mint egy nagyvárosban. Ha egy ország megfelelő IKT infrastruktúrát képes megteremteni a lakosság számára, akkor óriási előnye van a nemzetközi piacokon, és versenyképességben. Azonban infrastruktúra létesítéséhez az első a pénzügyi források biztosítása. Az EU nagyon sok pályázati lehetőséget kínál ilyen beruházások céljára, és a legfontosabb, hogy tudjunk a lehetőséggel élni. Magyarországon is rengeteg településen történt IKT infrastruktúra kiépítés, azonban nem mindig a legmegfelelőbb helyen. A fejlesztési források minél hatékonyabb felhasználása érdekében véleményem szerint olyan mutatószámrendszert lenne érdemes kidolgozni, amely alapján pontosabban lehetne meghatározni, hogy hol érdemes fejleszteni, hol hasznosulnak legjobban a fejlesztési források. A jelenleg alkalmazott különböző külföldön kidolgozott indexek torzítanak, nem tükrözik a valós regionális helyzetet, hiszen nem a saját környezeti feltételeinkhez alakították ki őket, hanem makroszintű, egységes nemzetközi összehasonlításra fejlesztették, és ezért sok mindent nem vesz figyelembe. Ezek természetesen nemzetközi rangsor készítésére nagyon is alkalmasak, de mindenképpen hasznos lenne egy olyan mutatószámrendszer, amely a saját országunk tényleges fejlettségét mutatja, régiós szinten is.

In 1988-1989 a stream of East Germans sought refugee in Hungary at the Embassy of West Germany in Budapest. The three countries taking part in the issue made different solutions to deal with the increasing problem. The East German leadership tried to call back the refugees and calm down the emigration process, but it had lost its confidence. West Germany tried to solve the problem not only on the level of consulship but exten-sively, in part with recognizing the status those waiting for West German citizenship and those for refugee status - without any success. In the interest of the resolution and bring the Hungarian leadership to their point of view, they tried to make use of the international organizations. However, the Hungarian leadership made efforts to stay out of the issue to get the two German states make an agreement. But there was no chance for that so Buda-pest gave up its quasi neutrality and tried to solve the problem opening the border by avoiding Hungary to turn into a refugee camp of the region. Besides making this ad hoc arrangement, the whole issue needed more radical crisis management, not only in Hungary.

During the past centuries many great philosophers and statesmen dreamt about the possible constitutional scope of exceeding Europe's political division and fulfilling the unified/united Europe. Most conceptions outlined the practical realization at a supranational level, although in the last decades there has been a greater emphasis on the sub-national (regional, micro-regional) level or else the "multi-level" Europe. Considering its scientific importance there has been less mention of the importance of the local, regional networks, however, their functionality –in the form of sister town connections –has been experienced by many towns in Hungary. In my thesis I intended to shed light on the fact that the sistertown connections –if being able to overstep the mayors and the local authorities' protocol meetings -and it can be the pledge of their viability, take a prominent part in framing the "bottom up" Europe. The personal, civil relationships, the common interests and the solutions to collective problems may all lead to a continuity in the increasingly "multigeared" European integration. In order to present the subject matter I selected the analysis of sister town connections related to the county town, Zalaegerszeg. My research questions were as follows: to what extent the sister town connection of Zalaegerszeg has changed in terms of geographical and content orientation, what elements of networking, independent from any political orientation, have been used, how the intensity fluctuation of the connections can be explained. The conclusion of my research is that the citizens, the civil organisations and the local authority of Zalaegerszeg, whose number of sister towns –fourteen –is greater than the Hungarian average, build their sister town connections in a conscious way, meanwhile integrating them functionally and successfully at a local level into the network of international connections.