The Center for European Enlargement Studies organized the international conference entitled “Improving solidarity in Central and Eastern Europe: new approaches to international reconciliation” on the 26th of June, 2013. The conference was the closing event of the academic project entitled “ The Seven Neighbors of Hungary - Questions of Historical Reconciliation and Cooperation in the 21st Century”. The project was an attempt at a reappraisal and exploration of the neighborhood relations of Hungary. It concentrated its efforts at detailing various problems of historical and diplomatic reconciliation and seeking possible solutions for them. The project consisted of seven workshops, taking, one by one, all the seven neighbors of Hungary. The aim of the project was to bring together diplomats and established experts with students and young researchers doing studies in this field, coming from various Hungarian universities. The goal was to launch a dialogue between the experts and representatives on one side, and local perceptions on the other, in a productive exchange of ideas and perspectives.

The seven lectures in the framework of this project dealt with the relations of Hungary with Romania, Hungary with Slovenia, Hungary with Ukraine, Hungary with Croatia, Hungary with Austria, Hungary with Slovakia and Hungary with Serbia.

The Center for European Enlargement Studies would like to take this opportunity to thank the Embassies of Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Austria, Serbia, Ukraine and Slovakia for their invaluable help, and the Ambassadors for their important personal contributions to the project. The project would not have been possible without the generous backing of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in Budapest, who provided pivotal funding and administrative support for this important academic endeavor.

The conference was opened by a keynote lecture of professor Gert Weisskirchen, who highlighted the problems of historical reconciliation and inter-state relations in his speech. He also spoke about the issues of historical memory, national narratives and dealing with problematic episodes of states’ histories, bringing in the German experience in these matters.

The first panel consisted of an exploration of the sources of tension in the Hungarian neighborhood, concentrating especially on the past and present relationship of Hungary with its two neighbors, Slovakia and Romania. Balázs Trencsényi, professor at the CEU Department of History, a well-known expert on Romanian Hungarian relations, described the national narratives governing the relationship in detail. Gábor Egry, a historian at the Institute of Political History in Budapest, explored the diplomatic and political side of the relationship, highlighting the lack of progress made in recent years. Ferenc Laczó, from the University of Jena, spoke about Hungarian national narratives and the progress of memory studies at the academic level. The three agreed that improvement could come from more interaction on the cultural level, the improvement of regionalization and academic exchanges; historical reconciliation should be viewed as an ongoing, open-ended process, not a finite one, that one can arrive at through political measures.

The second panel consisted of a description and comparison of similar models of reconciliation from other European settings. The –already classic- model of Franco-German reconciliation was presented in detail by Barbara Kunz, from the Stiftung Genshagen, Schloss Genshagen in Germany.  She highlighted the positive aspects of the model, but also pointed to its unfinished and elitist nature, concentrating on high politics, culture and academia. This talk was followed up by Mitja Žagar from Institute for Ethnic Studies in Ljubljana, who spoke about the examples learned from the relations of the Balkan states. Slavka Otcenasova from the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University at Košice described the Hungarian-Slovak relationship and conflict in detail.

The panel discussion were followed up by an open roundtalk discussion of the ambassadors coming from the seven neighbors of Hungary. The discussion was chaired and directed by the director of CENS, professor Péter Balázs, who asked the diplomatic representatives of the countries to describe the relationship with Hungary in the framework of three basic questions: What could the countries themselves, Hungary, and the European Union, respectively, do to improve cooperation and reconciliation in the area? The ambassadors each responded with regional solutions, concentrating on issues ranging from more economic cooperation to the strengthening of cultural ties, and common governmental sessions. The final panel elicited an open and lively debate and exchange of ideas between the diplomats themselves, the presenters in the conference and the audience, who followed up the presentation with many questions.