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HUNGARY
The Republic of Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe, bordered
by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. It is
known locally as the Country of the Magyars or Magyarország.
History
Tradition holds that Hungary was founded by Árpád, who led the Magyars into
the Pannonian plains in the 9th century. The Kingdom of Hungary was
established in 1000 by King St. Stephen I. Initially the history of Hungary
was developed in a triangle with that of Poland and Bohemia, with the many
liaisons with Popes and Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire .
Gradually Hungary turned into a large, independent
kingdom which formed a distinct Central European culture with ties to
greater West European civilisation. Hungarian culture influenced other, for
example the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Together with Polish and Czech
lands, Hungary formed the Visegrád group of nations. Today an alliance of
the same name exists again with the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland.
Hungarian independence ended with the Ottoman conquest at the beginning of
the 16th century; the parts of Hungary that were not conquered by the
Ottomans were annexed by Austria, the rulers of which were Hungarian kings
at the same time. Austria eventually retook all Hungarian territory by the
end of the 17th century from the Ottomans.
After the final defeat of the Turkish, a long struggle began between the
Hungarian noble nation and the Habsburg kings for the protection of
noblemens' rights (thus guarding the autonomy of Hungary). The fight against
Austrian absolutism resulted in two wars for freedom: one led by a
Transsylvanian nobleman, Ferenc Rákóczi, between 1704-1711; and the second
in 1848, in which the Austrians were able to prevail only with Russian help.
Thanks to the victories against Austria by the French-Italian coalition (the
Battle of Solferino, 1859) and Prussia (Königgratz, 1866), Hungary would
eventually, in 1867, manage to become an autonomous part of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, until that Empire's collapse following World War I. Hungary
separated from Austria on October 31, 1918.
In March 1919 the communists joined the government, and in April, Béla Kun
proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic. This government proved to be short
lived; the Romanian army invaded, the communist forces were defeated and the
Soviet Republic was toppled on August 6, 1919. In January 1920, elections
were held for a unicameral assembly. Admiral Miklós Horthy was elected
Regent. In June, the Treaty of Trianon was signed, fixing Hungary's borders.
Compared with the prewar Kingdom, the size and population of this new
Hungary were reduced by about two-thirds. Miklós Horthy ruled with
dictatorial powers for most of the interwar period.
Horthy made an alliance with Nazi Germany in the 1930s, in the hope of
revising the territorial losses that had followed World War I. Hungary was
rewarded by Germany with territories belonging to Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia
and Romania, and took an active part in World War II. However, in October
1944, Hitler replaced Horthy with the Hungarian Nazi collaborator Ferenc
Szálasi in order to avert Hungary's defection to the Allied side. During the
Holocaust more than 400,000 Jews and several tens of thousands of Romas
perished.
Following the fall of Nazi Germany, Hungary once again became a communist
state. In 1956, a revolt and announced withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact were
met with a military intervention by the Soviet Union and led to the
deposition and execution of the reform-minded communist prime minister Imre
Nagy. In the late 1980s, Hungary led the movement to dissolve the Warsaw
Pact and shifted toward multiparty democracy and a market-oriented economy.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Hungary developed closer
ties with Western Europe, joined NATO in 1999 and joined the European Union
on May 1, 2004.
Politics
The President of the Republic, elected by the parliament every 5 years, has
a largely ceremonial role, but powers also include appointing the prime
minister. The prime minister selects cabinet ministers and has the exclusive
right to dismiss them. Each cabinet nominee appears before one or more
parliamentary committees in consultative open hearings and must be formally
approved by the president.
The unicameral, 386-member National Assembly (the Országgyulés) is the
highest organ of state authority and initiates and approves legislation
sponsored by the prime minister. A party must win at least 5% of the
national vote to form a parliamentary faction. National parliamentary
elections are held every 4 years (the last was in April 2002). A 15-member
Constitutional Court has power to challenge legislation on grounds of
unconstitutionality.
Counties
Hungary is subdivided administratively into 40 regions. Of these, 19 are
counties (megyék, singular - megye) and 20 are so-called urban counties
(singular - megyei város), in addition to which there is one capital city
(fováros): Budapest. The other 39 are:
Békéscsaba
Debrecen
Dunaújváros
Eger
Gyor
Hódmezovásárhely
Kaposvár
Kecskemét
Miskolc
Nagykanizsa
Nyíregyháza
Pécs
Sopron
Szeged
Székesfehérvár
Szolnok
Szombathely
Tatabánya
Veszprém
Zalaegerszeg
Bács-Kiskun (Kecskemét)
Baranya (Pécs)
Békés (Békéscsaba)
Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén (Miskolc)
Csongrád (Szeged)
Fejér (Székesfehérvár)
Gyor-Moson-Sopron (Gyor)
Hajdú-Bihar (Debrecen)
Heves (Eger)
Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok (Szolnok)
Komárom-Esztergom (Tatabánya)
Nógrád (Salgótarján)
Pest (Budapest)
Somogy (Kaposvár)
Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg (Nyíregyháza)
Tolna (Szekszárd)
Vas (Szombathely)
Veszprém (Veszprém)
Zala (Zalaegerszeg)
Geography
Hungary's landscape consists mostly of the flat to rolling plains of the
Carpathian Basin, with hills and lower mountains to the north along the
Slovakian border (highest point: the Kékes at 1,014 m). Hungary is divided
in two by its main waterway, the Danube (Duna); other large rivers include
the Theiss (Tisza) and Dráva, while the western half contains Lake Balaton,
a major body of water. The largest thermal lake in the world, Lake Hévíz
(Hévíz Spa) is located in Hungary. And the second largest lake in the
Carpathian Basin (and probably the largest artificial lake in Europe) is
Tisza-tó (Lake Theiss).
The local climate is temperate, with cold, cloudy, humid winters and warm
summers, and the relative isolation of the Carpathian Basin makes it
susceptible to droughts. Average annual temperature is 9.7 °C.
Economy
Hungary continues to demonstrate strong economic growth as one of the newest
members of the European Union (since 2004). The private sector accounts for
over 80% of GDP. Foreign ownership of and investment in Hungarian firms is
widespread, with cumulative foreign direct investment totaling more than
US$23 billion since 1989. Hungarian sovereign debt was upgraded in 2000 to
the second-highest rating among all the Central European transition
economies. Inflation and unemployment - both priority concerns in 2001 -
have declined substantially. Economic reform measures such as health care
reform, tax reform, and local government financing have not yet been
addressed by the present government.
Demographics
For some 95% of the population, mostly Hungarians, the mother tongue is
Hungarian, a Finno Ugric language unrelated to any neighbouring language.
Several ethnic minorities exist: Roma (2%), Germans (1.2%), Romanians
(0.8%), Slovaks (0.4%), Croats (0.2%), Serbs (0.2%) and Ukrainians (0.1%).
The largest religion in Hungary is Catholicism -Roman and Greek- (approx two
thirds of the population), with a Calvinist minority (around 20%) and
Lutherans (5%). Most of the country's Jews (1%) live in Budapest.
Several large Hungarian minorities exist across the border in neighbouring
countries, notably in Ukraine (in Transcarpathia), Slovakia, Romania (in
Transylvania) and Serbia (in Vojvodina) . |
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