ABSTRACT
The Carpatho-Pannonian Area (C-PA) is located in the southeastern corner of Central Europe, surrounded by the Carpathians, the Alps and the Dinaric ranges. At present, there are eight nation states in the area: Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. The area under examination (approximately 300,000 square kilometres) is the largest multicultural macroregion in Europe – since the ethnic cleansings in the north (on Czech, Polish and Ukrainian territories) between 1944 and 1950, and in the south (in the Balkans) between 1991 and 1999. The ethnic borders and settlements in this area were stabilized during the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and the present-day borders of the states were fixed during the twentieth century. However, the borders of the nation states, mainly formed after World War I, are seldom identical with the ethnic borders, a fact that has had a basically negative impact on the twentieth century relations between neighbouring nations. The interethnic neighbourhood relations both across the border and within the state borders have been affected and defined by a number of factors; social and economic regime changes, the consequences of the EU accession, the new eastern borders of the EU, the transformation of the roles and characteristics of national borders, and the renewed ethnic rivalry and discourse in which the large Hungarian and Roma minorities have played a prominent role.
