EU Conditionality at Work in the Accession Process of Central and Eastern Europe. Hungary, Minorities and the Criteria of 'Good Neighborliness'

Master's Thesis from the year 2007 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: European Union, , language: English, abstract: Hungary, one of the Central European states that freed itself from Communist rule through a peaceful and negotiated revolution during 1988/1989, entered the post-Cold War era with a considerable unsolved national ¿problem¿, or the ¿minority problem¿ as Katona points out. This ¿problem¿ is constituted by the existance of more than 2 million ethnic Hungarians living as national minority groups in its neighbouring states. The particuliarity of this problem does not only derive from the size of the minority groups ¿ which is approximately third of the Hungarian state¿s total population - but also from the fact that the post-1989 era was one of the first opportunities in Hungarian history when the state could actually lead a sovereign foreign policy.