To Reinvent or to Forget? Why Should We Reinvent Central Europe?

The notion of public good has fallen to pieces in Hungary. In order to reestablish it, to draw up a new social contract, we need to encourage new patterns of behaviour and employ new techniques. This is the essence of the movement called 'Reinventing Central Europe'.

The European Union has been going through a crisis.
It has lost its dynamism and can only strengthen its competitiveness and increase economic and social cohesion if the member states, regions, local governments and, not least, activist groups of local societies strive to achieve these aims.
Not all public figures seem to have understood this in our country. It is only in a new spirit that new forms and methods of cooperation can achieve success.

The various actors in the European construction ought to share a holistic vision even if, at the same time, the reality and possibilities are constantly changing in response to enlargement. While competing, they need to seek new opportunities for the necessity of cooperation.
Within the new framework of cooperation, they will have to adopt to a new rhythm of institutional and social transformation. None of this is possible if the patterns of thought and action, characteristic of the era of nation state, are not overcome. The twenty-five member states, and their well-known differences, will obviously not cooperate in everything all the time. It would be naive to think so. However, a small or medium-size country is clearly unable to secure its interests alone in a club of such size. One of the main driving forces of the European Union was, even before the Eastern enlargement, the regional or even international lobbying power and negotiating capacities of individual groups of countries.

It is time, therefore, for the newly joined countries, namely the eastern part of Central Europe, to discover the possibility of regional cooperation and mobilize all those positive elements of their past which may strengthen this new cooperation.

In order for the EU to become a successful global actor and for the integration process to continue satisfactorily, and for the new member states to view themselves as individually and collectively successful, Central Europeans need to invent Central Europe.

Rediscovery does not mean a return to the past and I do not intend to suggest a nostaligic escape. Nevertheless, certain historical frames of cooperation and coexistence exist to lead us out of the trap. > Continuation: Page 2: Reinventing Central Europe