5.1. (Civil) society and religion in general
8. The development of Hungarian civil society outside of Hungary
the Hungarian minority’s civil society outside of Hungary, especially in Romania and Slovakia (the cross-border territories with the largest number of Hungarian ethnics), is an important research topic.462 the picture is mixed: on the one hand, both the local Hungar-ian community and the efforts of the mother country are very well defined and point in the direction of the cooperation and of the conscious evolution, on the other hand, however, the extensive researches – based on which a clear picture could be obtained regarding the civil segments, – are not numerous and are mostly irregular and insignificant. This could be one of the most important provocation for the scientists dealing with the Hungarian civil sector.
458 Baranyi Béla: A határmentiség új dimenziói – együttműködés határok nélkül. [The new dimensions of the border regions – cooperation without borders] http://szemle.unideb.hu/wordpress/wp-content/
uploads/bsk-pdf-manager/230_2014-07-11.PDF> accessed 22 May 2014
459 Dr. erika Szabó: Hungarian proposals for the revision of egtC Regulation and egtC good practices.
Presentation of the Conference on Multilevel governance and egtC, 21–23th March, 2011 – Gödöllő (Hungary).
460 Baranyi (n 458)
461 http://egtc.kormany.hu/magyarorszagon-nyilvantartasba-vett-ett-k> accessed 13 May 2014
462 Tünde Székely: Hungarian Minority Civil Society in Romania and Slovakia. Civil Szemle 2012/3. 177.
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However, it is positive that the number of scientific publications and surveys, dealing with the comparison of several countries along the characteristics of the civil/nonprofit sectors increased, trying to compare and to list the community practice of the subject countries (focusing on the best practice principle)463.
a presentation of the Hungarian civil organisations in romania is primarily based on the researches carried out by the institute for ethnic and national Minority Studies (based in Cluj-Napoca) in 2009–2010.464 according to special estimations, there are 1200 Hungarian civil organizations in Romania; some other estimations mention 2000 of them.465 By their legal status, these organisations are foundations, associations and federal organisations.
67% of them function under the form of association, 23% function as foundations, and the remaining 10% are registered as federal organizations. the reason for this kind of percent-age distribution is that associations require the most convenient establishing conditions both from a legal and a financial point of view; this accounts for its popularity. Since 2002, registering a foundation requires an extremely high initial capital (approx. 13 million HuF), which has led to a drastic plummet in the number of foundation registrations.466
Federal organization is a form of organizational structure in which several civil organi-zations unite to establish a new legal entity. every founder organization becomes a member of the new entity; so federal organisations are usually umbrella organisations. the reason for such a low rate of this sort of organisations might be that civil organisations rarely establish umbrella organisations in Romania.467 one of the few prominent umbrella organizations is the association of the Hungarian Civil organizations of transylvania which constituted a counselling and information center in Cluj-Napoca at the Bocskai House.
a certain hierarchy has been established among the transylvanian Hungarian civil organizations as well. the ‘big’ civil organizations carry out their activities constantly in the limelight: these organizations provide security and impetus for the smaller civil movements as well. Among the most important organizations we may find The LAM Foundation, the Amőba Foundation in Sfântu Gheorghe, the Civitas Foundation in Cluj-Napoca.
there are ngos that operate safely within the chosen framework. they are not of national importance, but locally their existence and activity is essential. a good example is: the Hungarian Cultural Society in Săcele, the Teleki Hungarian House in Baia Mare or the Diaspora Foundation in Timișoara. There are ‘thematic’ civil organizations, too, which are not necessarily related to the Hungarians, but are extremely important and focus on social problems, such as the green transylvania association or the Maltese Charity Service in Timișoara.
463 E.g. Utasi Ágnes: Közösségi és közéleti aktivitás. Vizsgálat három ország hét magyar kistelepülésén.
[Community and public activity. a survey ran in seven small Hungarian settlements in three different countries.] Belvedere Kiadó, Budapest, 2012.
464 Kiss Dénes: Romániai magyar nonprofit szervezetek – 2009–2010. [Hungarian nonprofit organizations in Romania 2009–2010] In: Júlia Hosszú – Horváth István (eds.): Műhelytanulmányok a romániai ki-sebbségekről, 37. [Studies regarding the Hungarian Minority living in Romania, 37] Romanian Institute for Research on national Minorities, Kolozsvár, 2010. 3–30.
465 Székely (n 462) 178.
466 ibid. 179.
467 ibid.
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However, we cannot avoid the fact that many organizations do not prove to be viable within the analyzed segment, and thus the literature is constantly forced to deal with the problem of ‘sleeping organizations’.468
As for the field of activity of the civil organisations, we can declare that more than 51%
of them are dedicated to cultural purposes, and 11.1% of Hungarian civil organisations are specialized on education and research.
as for the sources of income of the civil organisations, application funds account for 60% of all the incomes, which shows a high dependency on application funds. economic sectors and personal donations make up only 21% of the income of civil organisations. We need to mention, there is also a possibility to offer 2% of the personal income tax to civil organisations; according to the collected data, this amounts to 17% of the total income.
Based upon tóth Károly’s estimation,469 there were about 2000 Hungarian organisa-tions in slovakia in 2003/2004, many of them being members of certain umbrella organi-sations (e.g. CSeMaDoK470, and Szlovákiai Magyarok Kerekasztala). Considering this factor, there are 3000–4000 registered organisations. Presently there are 1178 institutions and organisations in the database of the Forum information Centre website. according to research findings obtained in 1999–2001, 88.6% of Hungarian organisations in Slovakia avowed themselves to be cultural organisations and 12.6%declared to be engaged in educa-tion. extremely few organisations carried out other types of activities (social, environmental, youth, sports, etc.). the next research in line took place in 2003. according to these results, 68.5% of Hungarian civil organisations in Slovakia carry out cultural activities (!). Com-pared to the first research there is a visible decrease in the number of organisations engaged in cultural and (general) educational activities, on the one hand, but we can also witness the appearance of organisations, which have (primarily) media, youth, sports related activities.
By their legal status 63% of the organisations are civic associations, 12.7% are founda-tions, 9.3% are public benefit organisafounda-tions, 5.8% are charity foundafounda-tions, and the remain-ing 9.2% have other legal status. With regard to the foundations it should be noted that the vast majority of them are organizations which have been set up besides a municipality with Hungarian majority government, to help its activity471.
of course – as we mentioned – the existence of cross-border Hungarian civil society, its level of organization and its quality is a priority for both the a) civil and the b) public entities of the mother country.
Civil organizations included in point a) were established in Hungary especially to help the cross-border Hungarians preserving their identity without leaving their native country.
the best-known representatives of this type of organisations are the Foundation for the Hungarians Living Beyond the Borders (Pécs) and the Carpathian Foundation Hungary
468 Bodó Barna: Alvó szervezetek. [Sleeping Organizations] Civilfórum. Erdélyi civil társadalmi lap 2014/1.
3 p.
469 Tóth Károly: A magyar intézményrendszer fejlődése. In: Fazekas József – Hunők Péter (eds.): Magyarok Szlovákiában I. (1989–2004). Forum Minority Research Institute, Somorja – Dunaszerdahely, 2004.
247–270.
470 Formerly named: Czechoslovak Hungarian Workers’ Cultural association, presently: Hungarian Social and Cultural association of Slovakia.
471 http://vilag.transindex.ro/?cikk=21335> accessed 30 July 2014
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(eger), which is an independent non-governmental organization serving the Carpathian euroregion. the mission of the Carpathian Foundation-Hungary is to improve the quality of life of people living in the Carpathian euroregion, and to preserve the social, ethnic, cultural and environmental values and to provide sustainable development of the region.
Its significance is increased by the fact that it deals with the training of the representatives/
administrators of the cross-border Hungarian civil organizations: for example it launched a complex professional training for project assistants the target group being the Hungarian civil organizations operating in the ukraine.
a vast activity is carried out by the Rákóczi association and by the Hungarian Cultural College association, too472.
the activities of the state actors to support cross-border civilian communities can also be traced – besides the direct financing (the material support) – based on the extent in which the institutional forms of the personal relationship with the mother country are present.
It is significant that in the latest Hungarian legal development – contrary to the previous regulation – the legal basis was established for Hungarian citizens’ (typically those living in the neighbouring countries) participation in parliamentary elections without Hungarian residence.473
Among the significant management cirsumstances – within and across the borders – those must also be mentioned which allow for persons and organisations across the border to receive some kind of financial assistance. Therefore according to Act CLXXXII of 2010 on the Bethlen Gábor Fund a separate state financial fund was established for facilitating the prosperity of Hungarians living abroad in their homeland and the preservation and devel-opment of their diverse relationships with Hungary, and for strengthening their Hungarian national beliefs. a change of paradigmatic importance is that from the resources of the National Cooperation Fund (NEA) operating as the main financial resource of Hungarian civil associations not only domestic organisations, but – if they meet basic requirements474 – also (Hungarian) civil associations operating abroad may benefit. Moreover, it is also important that according to the provisions of act lXii of 2011 on Hungarians living in the neighbouring countries – who possess a Hungarian identification card or Hungarian relative identification card – may receive educational, cultural, community cultural, health care, travel and other allowances, benefits and services.
An outstanding aspect of the life of the cross-border Hungarian communities is their will to preserve their religious identity, which very often separates them from their sur-roundings as well as their language and cultural habits (see e. g. the Calvinist Hungarians living in Transylvania). Another instrument, the significance of which goes beyond the mere amount of support, is the one aiming at supporting Hungarian religious legal persons and votaries in neighbouring countries, through which the government and the religious legal person operating in a neighbouring country may conclude an agreement about the
sup-472 For example, it was this latter association that organized the 3rd Reunion of the Civil organizations of the Hungarian Minorities Living in the Carpathian Basin at Budakalász between 26–28 June 2003.
473 according to article 12 Paragraph (3) of act CCiii of 2011 on the election of the members of Parliament voters without residence in Hungary may vote only on party lists (i.e. not on individual candidates).
474 See for example Article 59 paragraph (4) of Act CLXXV of 2011 on the right of association, non-profit status, operation and support of civil organisations.
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plementary funding of church servants serving in Hungarian in settlements with less than 5,000 Hungarian inhabitants.475
Besides the exchange of experiences and the moral and material (financial) support, it would be important that the data regarding the cross-border civil society organizations should be accessible in an organized manner. this is carried out partially by the site eri-kanet.hu (unified database of the cultural organizations operating in the region), that cata-logues in detail the data of the most important 175 civil organizations operating beyond the borders of Hungary.476 of course, more and more such data bases are available in written and especially in electronic format.477
Regarding the analysed sphere exceptional opportunities are given by the electronic surfaces, and it can be observed that these electronic forums appear not only as a new set of methods for the self-organization of the Hungarian communities, but as the promoters of these communities’ image having a great impact on the self-image of the community too. Balázs D. attila in his work entitled Trend changes in the content of the cross-border Hungarian online media (Médiakutató 2006/4. 1.) makes reference to the history and the development of the online media in Hungarian language operated by the Hungarian com-munities living in the Carpathian Basin and presents some aspects of the portals operated by Hungarians living overseas and in other Western european countries. in transylvania an independent civilian journal was established, too: since 2009 the Civilfórum has been published. It is a journal dealing with the Hungarian civil society existing in Transylvania.
It is published at Cluj-Napoca. One of its main topics is the analysis of the image of civil communities as it appears in the printed and in the electronic media.478