Suchergebnisse

Croatia becomes the newest star of the European Union in year 2013 which event has already been equal to a quiet difficult task for the country and at the same time for its country image recently, and will mean the same during the brand-new episode in the life of Croatia beginning with its accession to the European Union. Conscious development and constant cultivation of the country image are prominent tasks for all countries of today, the 21st century, as the transformations of the end of the last century, births and rebirths of new countries have resulted an extremely hard situation in the nations' competition for the tourists, the investors, the export, or even for the recognition and positive judgement of Europe, thus the European Union. Croatia's country brand is a specific one as it is built up of really sensitive elements, while in its centre there is a nation that used to be part of series of confederations during its history, adapting or not adapting to the actual one in each period; and from the year 2013 it has to find its place in the European Union.

The aim of this paper is to provide a detailed overview of the domestic policy changes affecting privately owned businesses in Hungary during the reign of the 2nd and 3rd Orbán governments. After careful selection and omission of the less important measures, 36 examples are discussed. Their common characteristics are their discriminatory nature, meaning that they supported some firms and/or state-owned entities, while other businesses - chiefly the ones owned by foreign investors - were negatively affected. These new laws, regulations, by-laws or daily practices were openly in conflict with the letters and the spirit of the acquis communautaire - the guiding principles of the European Union. The Hungarian authorities played on time. Their assumption was - and this assumption did prove to be correct in practice - that it would take years until the EU machinery would reach a verdict and instruct Hungary, as a member-state to repel the given legislation. An important finding of the paper is that in 16 cases out of the 36 cases presented, the previous Hungarian governments also relied on such discriminatory solutions, but these cases were not so costly for the targeted private businesses and were not implemented with such a brutal force. As it is well-known, parallel to the policy measures discussed in the paper, the 2nd and 3rd Orbán-governments proceeded with a broad renationalization policy as well. These events were discussed at great length in Mihályi (2015a).