Hungary is a country that, in the mindof any slightly romantic Austrian reader, will immediately bring up images from“Sissi“ (more formally known as “her Imperial Majesty Empress Elizabeth ofAustria”); a country that the young Empress is reported to have lovedprofoundly, readily embracing an understanding of its people and culture. Aslightly less romantic person, would, however, be dissatisfied with suchfactoids; Out of the world’s 200 countries, out of the 27 EU member states, asa modern country, Hungary stands out: in discussing it, it becomes us tounderstand why that might be.

To any European, the first and foremostanswer is language; while almost all official European languages belong to theIndo-European language family, Hungarian, or “Magyar”, is part of the Finno-Ugriclinguistic family, something it has in common with Finnish and Estonian; asHungary is the largest of those three in terms of population, Hungarian is byfar the most spoken of the languages. Altogether, the relative disconnectionbetween Hungarian and other European languages places an onerous burden upon nativespeakers of the former; as mentioned in an earlier article, language shapesthought, and in turn, thought shapes communication patterns and processes, aswell as expectations and understanding. The uniqueness of the Hungarianlanguage means that Hungarians must be the ones to learn how to communicate atthe European level, and not vice versa. It is, in short, an iron-clad reasonfor which native speakers of Hungarian should be interested in the ECo-C.

As luck would have it, interested partiesneed not wait long to satisfy the craving for communication training. Recentreports indicate that the ECo-C will be available in Hungary in a few months’time. In a recent implementation meeting held at IPKeurope between the Austrianand Hungarian partners, it became clear that the prerequisites would soon be fulfilled,the procedure concluded and the Hungarian ECo-C certification available to thepublic as of Fall 2010.

From an outsider perspective, thisexpansion is in line with the historical connection between the two countries;a community of history makes iteasier for stakeholders to come together, learn, share advances, and benefitfrom each other. In the framework of the European Union, however, this process carriesa totally different name and much more profound implications: in expanding the ECo-Cto Hungary from Austria, these two countries are doing groundwork on a granderscale; they are in essence adding one more element to the community of destiny that the EU seeks to build.

Pictured:Leopold Kaiblinger, President IPKeurope, Erich Lifka, IPcenter Vienna,Prof.Sándor Bordás, Academic Advisor, ECo-C Hungary, Judit Jurcsisin, LR-TrainingMaster, ECo-C Hungary, Beáta Földváry, Country Representative,ECo-C Hungary, Zóltan Petrovszki,Master Trainer, ECo-C Hungary, Karina Kaiblinger, Internationalcoordination, ECo-C Europe.