1896-0200 Macroeconomic trends by the use of structural funds Vásáry Miklós author Tóth János Balázs author Baranyai Zsolt author Takács István author Takács-György Katalin author Ministry for Rural Development of Hungary Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Hungary Szent István University, Hungary Óbuda University, 1084 Budapest, Tavaszmező u. 15–17, Hungary Óbuda University, Keleti Karoly Faculty of Business and Management Correspondence to: Miklós Vásáry Correspondence to: János Balázs Tóth Correspondence to: Zsolt Baranyai Correspondence to: István Takács takacs.istvan@kgk.uni-obuda.hu Correspondence to: Katalin Takács-György takacsnegyorgy.katalin@kgk.uni-obuda.hu 20 03 2014 Numer 4 (24) 2013 491 504 Copyright © 2014 2014 <p>The main goal of the European Union&#039;s regional policy is to reduce structural disparities between EU member states and regions. The balanced development throughout the EU can promote real equal opportunities for all. So the policy is based on the concept of solidarity and cohesion of economic and social conditions. It achieves this by means of a variety of financing operations, principally through the Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund.</p> <p>The policy focuses on three main objectives, convergence – solidarity, regional competitiveness and employment and European territorial cooperation. By these objectives the EU supported projects in a wide range of areas – at regional and national level – from business support to urban development. It is very important that, these themes reflect the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy to promote smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.</p> <p>Between 2007 and 2013 for the European Union&#039;s regional policy is allocated 347 billion euro, 35.7% of the total EU budget for that period, just over 49 billion euro a year. All programmes are co-financed by the member countries the total available funding is almost 700billion euro, so the programmes and the results are and will be significant.</p> <p>The main programmes, eligible areas, and the beneficiaries of the national programs can be summarized, but to measure the various programs effectiveness, in the different countries, are much more complicated. The results depend on a lot of variables, for example the managerial institutional system, the structure of the national programs, the habitat of the participant and many obvious and potential, external and internal economical and social conditions.</p> <p>But despite of the dissimilarities, we try to collect, through some macroeconomical structural indicators, the main characteristic trends of the utilization EU sources. With various methods, we will characterize the coherence between gross domestic product, labour force statistics etc. Because the analysis of the 27 EU countries could be voluminous, it will be focused on some countries of Central and Eastern Europe.</p> 1 Európai Unió Tanácsa (2006), 1083/2006/EK rendelet (2006. július 11.) az Európai Regionális Fejlesztési Alapra, az Európai Szociális Alapra és a Kohéziós Alapra vonatkozó általános rendelkezések megállapításáról és az 1260/1999/EK rendelet hatályon kívül helyezéséről. 2 European Commission (2011), Financial Report for Financial Year 2010, Detailed data 2000–2010, http://ec.europa.eu/budget/library/biblio/publications/2010/fin_report/fin_report_10_en.pdf (access: 04.08.2012). 3 European Commission (2012), Structural indicators, http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/structural_indicators/indicators (access: 31.08.2012). 4 Eurostat (2012), Statistics Database, http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/statistics/search_database (access: 28.07.2012). 5 Horváth D. (2009), A regionális politika forrásainak elosztása a Visegrádi Országokban EU, Working Papers 2009, No. 1, pp. 46–67. 6 Drążkiewicz J., Kusideł E., Penszko P. (2011), The Impact of Cohesion Policy on the Level and Quality of Employment in Countries of the Visegrad Group – Summary and Conclusions, http://www.kep.uni.lodz.pl/ewakusidel/index/2011_impact_of_cohesion_policy_on_employment_in_V4.pdf (access: 01.09.2012). 7 Kende T., Szűcs T. (szerk.) (2011), Bevezetés az Európai Unió politikáiba Complex Kiadó, Budapest. 8 Nemzeti Fejlesztési Ügynökség (NFÜ) (2012), Monitoring kézikönyv, Budapest. 9 The Treaty of Rome (1958), Texts of the European Treaties. European Economic Community, http://www.eurotreaties.com/rometreaty.pdf  10 Visegrad Group (2012), About the Visegrad Group, www.visegradgroup.eu/about (access: 04.09.2012). 11 Gakova Z., Grigonytė D., Monfort P. (2009), A Cross-Country Impact Assessment of EU, Cohesion Policy Working Papers 2009, No. 1.