In September 1990 Hungarian and Estonian researchers came together to a round-table talk in Pécs, the regional centre of Southern Hungary. Economists, jurists, political scientists and geographers of the Centre for Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and of the Institute of Economics of the Estonian Academy of Sciences expounded their research results and exchanged ideas on the subject of regional policy and the development and work of local self-government communities.

In both countries there have been requirements for fundamental changes accumulated in past decades: change to a post-industrial society, structural and technological change in economy and change of social paradigm. The democratic transformation has opened merely the doors to the socio-economic modernisation in both countries. The way there, however, is today for the most part unknown and there are several unknown political factors influencing the tendency of development. Regional and settlement development has come to a crucial cross-roads both in Hungary and Estonia. The period of fast town-growth and settlement concentration has come to an end as well. It is the turning point of the new settlement-forming process as well that gives ground to the beginning of a new era of regional policy. What should the regional policy of the new economic system be like, in what way should it help the restoration of Hungarian and Estonian national markets, how can it serve best the macro- and microeconomic reintegration into the growth centres of Europe, in what way should the the settlement function under market terms (conditions), what should the relationship between the local authority and the central state be like and what direction should the regional development policy take ? The participants of this round-table conference tried to give answers to all these questions and the answers given to the various issues are published in this volume.

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