Europeanisation of Territorial Governance in Three Eastern/Central European Countries

The current study attempts to find correlations between the Europeanisation of national and territorial public administrations and the requirement system of Structural Funds ’ management. The paper introduces the development of territorial administrations and the system of regional development policy management in three member states (first of all in Hungary based on our own research experience and relying on less detailed literature and information from Poland and Slovakia). The analysis of processes affecting territorial public administrations and the analysis of the driving forces will point out the conflicts of the administrations ’ Europeanisation and the barriers of adapting external models in a Central or Eastern European region lacking real traditions of decentralisation and similarly regional identity. The future of the Structural Funds beyond 2013 is an even more open question. However, this fact does not exempt the CEE countries from the responsibility of treating the meso-tier decentralisation