Introducing historical landscape in the cultural heritage conservation through the example of the Tokaj wine region in Hungary

The Tokaj wine region has been declared as a historical landscape by the decree of the National Ministry of Human Capacities in 2012. The historical landscape is defined in the Act LXIV of 2001 on the Protection of Cultural Heritage as an area under the preservation of Historical Monuments. The Tokaj Wine Region is the only legally recognized historical landscape in Hungary. This protection aims to preserve the historical built and natural environment as well as the traditional land use methods. The historical landscape, in the case of Tokaj, is a legal tool to increase the heritage protection level of the wine region. Nevertheless, no further details have yet been communicated on the preservation method. In this matter, protection remains on the level of discourse which puts emphasis on the expected perspectives in territorial planning and development. It may create a narrative that might potentially transform the territory. The region of our case study has been inscribed as a cultural landscape on the UNESCO World Heritage List and was added to the World Heritage List in 2002. Besides, the national government recognized the region as a territory of priority development in 2014 and a territory of priority touristic development in 2017. The area in question is marked by the stark contrast between social inequality and the image of the prestigious wine sector. In this paper, after providing a discussion of the institutional background of the adoption of the historical landscape in Hungary, I describe the different protection tools from the perspective of heritage conservation in order to reflect on the conception of the historical landscape: how was the region recognized as a historical landscape, and what was the purpose of this recognition? The main aim of the paper is to analyse the institutional process that led to the integration of a new object of protection in Hungary, called historical landscape.


Introduction
This paper has a double objective. First, it defines the challenges of the preservation of a spatial area from the perspective of heritage conservation through the notion of the historical landscape. Second, it analyses how legal tools (decree, law, regulation, etc.) on a national level, in this case Hungarian ones, relate to international conventions (Convention for the Protection of the Architectural Heritage of Europe, European Landscape Convention, Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage). Instead of comparing the conceptions of heritage and landscape according to the Conventions, in particular the European Landscape Convention and the World Heritage Convention, we will study how both Conventions, notably the European one, influenced, the national institution to adapt the notion of the landscape in territorial planning and heritage conservation in the case of Tokaj wine region, recognized as a World Heritage site on the 26th session of the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO in Budapest in 2002. It should be noted that the landscape is not only conceived as a heritage in the World Heritage Convention, but also recognized as an element of the European heritage in the European Landscape Convention (Margarito 2019). That being said, neither of these Conventions mention the notion of historical landscape, whereas the National Office of Cultural Heritage in Hungary adopted in 2005 the notion to manage challenges of the preservation of a spatial area.
The Tokaj wine region provides an excellent case study to demonstrate the complexity of protecting a large area by illustrating interactions between actors on the national, international and local levels with diverse objectives: create a legal framework for the Hungarian World Heritage properties, introduce landscape in the heritage conservation, integrate the prescriptions of international conventions in a national legal framework, respond to the local demand on heritage protection. The events in 2008 around a project to construct a straw burning power plant in Tokaj wine region led the local civil society (winemakers, mayors, administrators …) to protest against the project and to claim for a national legal framework for the World Heritage site. The events accelerated the decision-making process on a national level leading to the introduction of the Act on World Heritage in 2011 and the decree designating the Tokaj wine region as a historical landscape in 2012. The unfolding of the events brings us to the question of the role of heritage conservation in relation to the World Heritage site of Tokaj. Thus, the study incorporates the follow-up on the interviews with the decision makers about the protection of the World Heritage site.
Tokaj wine region is the only legally recognized historical landscape in Hungary. This is the first time that a large area (88,134 ha) is recognized by the legislation for not only its natural significance but also cultural value. Nevertheless, no decree as to the implementation of the requirements of such legislation has yet been adopted. In consequence, no regulations or principles related to precise the modalities of the protection yet exist. For that matter, it would be a significant contribution to specify what an adequate protection framework might be. Following the description of the analytical framework of this study, I provide an account of the institutional processes of the introduction of the decree on the historical landscape by mentioning the reasons for the adoption of this new object of protection, and I contextualize the Tokaj wine region by describing the existing legislative protection tools. Finally, I conclude by studying the response and interpretation of local territorial planning actors in the wine region of the historical landscape.

Material and methods
This study is an attempt -within the boundaries of cultural heritage studies -to survey the institutional process of the introduction and adoption of the historical landscape in Hungary through the example of the Tokaj wine region, UNESCO World Heritage site. The idea of historical landscape determines the theoretical framework of the article. I use the notion of the historical landscape to understand the discourse of local actors in relation to the protection of the World Heritage site and discuss the local conception linked to it. Firstly, I concentrate on the analytical framework characterized by many extra European conceptions where the notion of the historical landscape is identified as a legislative conservation tool in heritage management. Secondly, the article also discusses how the ratification of the European Landscape Convention of Hungary influenced the cultural heritage policy on a national level by introducing the idea of sustainability in heritage conservation and by expanding the protected object to a large area defined as landscape.
To do so, first, I analyse the legislative framework of the cultural heritage protection on a national level: the Act on the protection of cultural heritage, the Act on World Heritage, the decree on the historical landscape and meeting reports on the elaboration of the decree. Second, we will analyze the configuration of the actors participating in the elaboration of the decree on historical landscape by studying which institution initiated the decree and who carried out the process. In this phase of the research, I conducted 4 semi-structured interviews (two actors from the national level and two actors from the Tokaj wine region) to specify the initial conception and motivations for the adoption of the decree. My experience as a site manager of the World Heritage site of the Tokaj Wine Region Historic Cultural Landscape for eighteen months from March 2016 allowed me to participate in several assemblies charged with the protection of the World Heritage site. Curiously few of them approached the question of the regulations on the historical landscape. Concerning the World Heritage site, I study the Management Plan elaborated in 2016 to understand how the Plan apprehends the historical landscape. Other sources of this paper include the national and local media publications in line with the decree of the historical landscape to become analyse the narrative constructed on a national and local level by decision makers and experts on cultural heritage as to the decree.

Theoretical background
The reconstruction of the historical landscape became the main subject of the historical geography since 1890 (Timar 2006). The major theoretical approaches were proposed by such German geographers as Alfred Hettner, J. F. Unsteadis, Konrad Kretschmer, Shaffer, and Ruppert. Their studies were based on the analyses of different horizontal stratifications of landscape in different epochs. In addition to the historical reconstruction of the natural landscape, the spatial dimensions of the built environment (urban landscape) and society were also examined (Timar 2006). French geographers, for their part, played an important role in the institutionalization of historical geography in 1930, notably, the founders of the Annales school: Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch. They emphasized the link between history and geography. The influence of French historical geography, after World War II, despite its former European leadership, gradually decreased. French academic researchers began to turn to economic geography, human geography or regional geography. However, it would be hard to overlook Roger Dion's lecture in 1948 at Collège de France who became a historical geography professor in the Collège. Dion highlights the role of archeology in historical geography. He specifies that historical geography of France should be, along with archeology in the most general sense of the word, a research for reasons that determined the formation of human settlements (Dion 1990: 29). In 1988, Xavier de Planhol and Paul Claval published the work titled Géographie historique de la France. The two authors maintained the closest connections with the Cambridge School of Historical Geography (Timar 2006). The aim of the work is to specify the establishment of the settlements on the French territory and to recall how it was successively divided and articulated through time (Claval 1992). Indeed, the ideas propounded by the Cambridge School of Historical Geography was represented in almost every major university by the 1970s (Timar 2006). In Great Britain, historical geography represented a discipline all apart. Moreover, other disciplines such as archeology, sociology, migration studies completed the conception of historical geography by authors such as Pooley, Meinig, Lawton etc. (Timar 2006).
In the case of Hungary, researches in historical geography were influenced by English and German works since the 1980s (Timar 2006). The Department of Nyirség under the supervision of the Hungarian Society of Geography founded in 1975 by Sandor Frisnyak, one of the pioneers of historical geography who also studied the Tokaj wine region. Considerable research had been carried out on the region about the history of settlements, land use, viticulture etc. In other words, it can be noted that Tokaj wine region, our case study, is not only relevant in the case of heritage conservation and territorial planning, but has already been the subject of several studies in the discipline of historical geography.
The historical landscape classification was adopted in the heritage management and in territorial (and urban) planning. The notion entered the vocabulary of the conservation managers in the cultural heritage and territorial planning field in 1970s. The first symposium entitled International Symposium on the Conservation and Restoration of Gardens of Historical Interest tackled the question of the landscape in a historical perspective, but beyond the conservation of monuments, it also took consideration the sites, gardens districts, parks, and rural landscapes into account. The symposium was organised by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA), and took place in Fontainebleau. The landscape became a new object of conservation as part of the heritage on an international level. That is to say, although it was not until recently that the notion of cultural and historical landscape as a record of the past of the society has caught on among landscape architects, territorial planners and conservation managers (Buggey 1992;Birnbaum 1995), it has already been a subject and object of research in human geography (Sauer 1925;Claval 1974). From 1920, initiatives emerged to define the origin, evolution, and the physical characteristics of cultural and historical landscape, principally in the United States and in the United Kingdom. The increasing number of preservation perspectives of historical landscape in the United States and in Great Britain between 1920 and 1990 is well described in William H. Tishler's article. The author has strived to emphasize how the national management tools integrated the international framework by giving a supranational character to the historical landscape. Two opposing dynamics can be identified in the article. One that emerged in the United Kingdom proposing a theory that landscape changes over time (Darby 1973), and the other coming from the United States, in particular from the Berkeley University, representing the approach where a special emphasis is given to cultural features rather than to change (Sauer 1925).
In 1999, Operational Guidelines have been elaborated by the Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation, and the California Department of Transportation based in a document prepared by the National Park Service in the USA. The Alliance was founded in 1978 and it assembled researchers and managers in North America in order to exchange ideas about the methods to analyze the landscape. The aim of the Operational Guidelines is to encourage managers to implement the requirements in Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act 1966 to inscribe national heritage in the National Register of Historical Places. The conception of the historical landscape introduced in the Guidelines presented methodology to organize data by highlighting the continuity of the history of landscapes transformed by human activity. According to the Guidelines, the notion of the historical landscape is defined as "a geographical area which has undergone past modification by human design or use in an identifiable pattern, or is the relatively unaltered site of a significant event, or is a natural landscape with important traditional cultural values" (General Guidelines For Identifying And Evaluating Historical Landscapes, California Department of transportation 1999: 5). According to the definition of Charles A. Birnbaum the "historical landscapes include residential gardens, community parks, highways, rural communities, cemeteries, battlefields and zoological gardens and institutional grounds. They are composed of a number of characters defining features which individually or collectively contribute to the landscape's physical appearance as they have evolved over time" (Birnbaum 1995: 1). However, the term of historical landscape is not reduced to the definition strictly used in the National Register. It designates all the cultural landscapes likely to be present on the register. Beyond the legal and planning documents, numerous journals (e.g., Historic Preservation, Landscape Architect Canada, Landscape Architecture, The Association for Preservation Technology International) treated the notion of historical landscape.
Since the 1990s, archeology and ecology in the United Kingdom began to develop methods with the intention of understanding social history from the study of landscapes. Just to mention one, The International Association for Landscape Ecology organised a conference in Stockholm in 2001. The conference tackled the notion of historical landscape from the perspective of heritage: Can historical landscapes be defined by specific criteria? Is it possible to determine a typology of historical landscapes? If so, would it be possible to use the typology across regional and national boundaries? The article published in the collection of the conference by Graham Fairclough who offers to approach the analyses of the landscape by the question of time depth. The landscape perceived as a set of changes allowing understanding of the development of society and its relation to the past. Like history, archeology has, in its turn, also taken interest in the study of the object of the landscape. It is on this logic that the National Historic Landscape Character Program (HLC), framed by English Heritage, was founded in partnership with the local government archeology services. This program aims to understand today's landscape by adopting an interdisciplinary approach, encompassing from human sciences to engineering (Fairclough 2008: 302). The purpose of this method is to contribute to heritage management by bringing the issue of change to the heart of the debate. This program promotes the participation of various territorial actors in the decision-making process concerning the territorial planning and the safeguarding of cultural heritage (Fairclough 2008: 303).
While the operational use of the concept of historical landscape has come from archaeologists in Great Britain and from landscape architects and geographers in the United States, the question of preservation and change remains to be debated on both sides. The use of the historical landscape in the field of cultural heritage preservation and spatial planning seems to be a technical, legal and administrative tool to describe cultural, economic and social phenomena (Sonkoly 2017: 15).
I would highlight the article written by Hans Renes, a geographer at the University of Utrecht, entitled "Historic Landscapes Without History? A Reconsideration of the Concept of Traditional Landscapes". The author studies history in landscape analysis and criticizes the common theory, that we have distinguished as dynamic landscape after 1990, but before the landscape was considered as stable. The author blames, in the first place, the approach that before the 1900s the landscape development was slow and gradual; and in the second place, that the development in marginalized areas was even more gradual. Finally, since the 19th century, the landscapes have transformed. This statement reinforces the debate between development and preservation in landscape planning rather than highlighting the management of change. According to Renes, the history of landscape demonstrates the complexity of landscapes that we must take into account in the spatial planning and management of cultural heritage by focusing on change.

The institutional background of the historical landscape in Hungary
It is worth considering the institutional background of heritage conservation in Hungary since 1990 when the first reflections on the notion of the historical landscape in relation to the conservation of Historical Monuments emerged. In 1992, the National Office for the Protection of Historical Monuments (Országos Műemlékvédelmi Hivatal) was established. The activities of the Office were defined by the decree of the minister in charge of the territorial planning and environmental protection. Historical Monument gained importance in the area of territorial planning by the publication of the Act LIV of 1997 on historical monument protection (Fekete 2005). Athough a major change came in 2001 when the Office of Cultural Heritage (Kulturális Örökségvédelmi Hivatal) was founded. We can note that a modification has been made in the title of the institution: monument has been replaced by the notion of cultural heritage. This modification marked a wider conception of protected elements, and in consequence, an institutional change. Thus, historical monuments became part of cultural heritage. The The notion of the historical landscape first appeared in 2005 in the Act LXIV of 2001 on the Protection of Cultural Heritage, as a specific object of Historical Monuments. The association of these two terms (historical monument and historical landscape) has been previously discussed in Hungary in the framework of a conference entitled "Historical Landscape, Cultural Landscape and Protection of Historical Monuments" in June 1993. The conference was organised by the National Office for the Protection of Monuments and the Ministry of Environment and Territorial Development. 116 participants from 16 different countries, mainly landscape architects, ecologists and specialists on historical monuments, debated the three keywords of the conference. The cultural landscape has emerged as a new theme in the context of the protection of Historical Monuments in Hungary. Following Hungary's ratification in 1990 of the Granada Convention (1985), it was noted that no cultural landscape was included in the Hungarian Register of Historic Monuments.
In April 2005 Hungary ratified the European Landscape Convention. Followed by the ratification, the Hungarian parliament acknowledged the European Landscape Convention and published the Convention in a national legislative framework: Act CXL of 2007 on the European Landscape Convention. The European Landscape Convention is presented in English and in Hungarian versions in the Act. Thus, a national legislative scheme had been created for the Convention. The entering into force of the Act on the 1 February 2008 accelerated the reflection on the historical landscape by the National Office of Cultural Heritage. In consequence, a priority task has emerged: to specify the definition and the implementation of the protection of the historical landscape.
The modification of the Act LXIV of 2001 on the Protection of Cultural Heritage in 2005 recalled the task to elaborate specifications and regulations concerning historical landscapes in Hungary as an area under the protection of Historical Monument. The modification of the Act, firstly, carried the concept of sustainability, beyond the concept of protection, and secondly, it introduced the notion of the landscape to the protection and management of the natural and cultural heritage. Finally, the modified Act obliged updating the regulations concerning the protection of Historical Monuments in order to adapt a sustainable vision in the protection and management of cultural heritage. The proposition for the integration of the historical landscape in the Act LXIV of 2001 on the Protection of Cultural Heritage was carried out by the National Office of Cultural Heritage. The idea came directly from an architect who was familiar with the international dynamics in the heritage conservation, having participated in several meetings on the elaboration of the European Landscape Convention as a member of International Council of Monuments and Sites in Hungary since 1983 and vice-president between 2005 and 2008.
In January 2008, an international conference on the topic of "Implementing the European Landscape Convention: implications and opportunities" was organised by the National Office of Cultural Heritage. At the conference the presentation of Graham Fairclough focused on the subject of the National Historic Landscape Character Program (HLC) named above. He underlines how archaeology adopted landscape. While the idea of the landscape defined in the European Landscape Convention put an emphasis on human perception of an area "whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors" and recognized its multi-period character contrary to the conception of the archaeology on landscape where rather specific aspects (particular period or activity, settlements) are studied (Fairclough 2006). The historical landscape in the Act LXIV of 2001 on the Protection of Cultural Heritage is conceived as a well-defined topographical area, associating the notion of the historical landscape with the concept of Historical Monuments, emphasizing the historical evolution of the landscape. The historical landscape becomes a legislative tool to protect a spatial area.
While the historical landscape figured in the Act LXIV of 2001 on the Protection of Cultural Heritage since 2005, it was not applied. The intense debates concerning the World Heritage site of Tokaj wine region in 2008, particularly about the absence of the Management Plan's legal status of the World Heritage site elaborated in 2003, led the National Office of Cultural Heritage to apply the historical landscape protection on the wine region. The States Parties and the local authorities should elaborate a management plan or other documented management system to ensure that the criteria decisive for the inscription such as the definition of the Outstanding Universal Value including the conditions of integrity and/or authenticity are sustained. The management plan must describe how the Outstanding Universal Value is maintained. Indeed, in 2003 a Management Plan has been elaborated, but it had no legal status. The debates in the wine region were raised because of a project which aimed to construct a straw burning power plant in Szerencs on the buffer zone of the World Heritage site, on which I develop below. We can observe, that the notion of historical landscape as a national protection tool had been directly associated with the World Heritage site of Tokaj, recognized as a cultural landscape.

Tokaj wine region: the contextualization of the object of conservation
Tokaj wine region is situated in the north-eastern part of Hungary. The region covers 27 settlements including 5 towns reaching a population of approximately 75,000 inhabitants. The surface area of the region is 88,124 ha including 5,800 ha of vineyards. The vineyards are situated on the volcanic slopes of the south-eastern part of the Zemplén mountain along the rivers of Tisza and Bodrog. The topographic, environmental and climatic combination creates a favorable microclimate for the wine production. This microclimate is characterized by hot and dry summers, cold winters and autumns particularly long and hot allowing the development of the "pourriture noble" (Botrytis cinerea), benefits for the production of the sweet wine called Aszú. The Botrytis cinerea is a fungus which affects the wine grapes by creating two different kinds of infections on grapes. The first, grey rot, is the result of a long wet or humid conditions. The second, noble rot, is the result of drier conditions following wetter ones. It can produce, as a result sweet wines, such as the aszú of Tokaj. The legal delimitation of the wine region goes back to 1737 when Emperor Charles VI by a royal decree protected the wine region. The Aszú wine reached an international recognition in the beginning of the 16th century when the wine was consumed in the French, English and Russian royal courts. During the Soviet period farmlands were collectivized in favor of intensive agriculture. The wine became the monopole of the State. In 1990, the state firm "Borkombinát" was demolished and several foreign investments (to mention some of them: Axa Millésimes, Vega Sicilia, GAN, GMF) moved in the region. The new firms contributed on the one hand to the refurbishment of historical domains and on the other hand to the introduction of new technology.
The inscription of the Tokaj Wine Region Historic Cultural Landscape on the World Heritage List follows the last dynamics of the spatial reorganization since the democratic transition. The wine region was inscribed on the basis of outstanding universal value criteria (iii): the Tokaj wine region represents a distinct viticultural tradition that has existed for at least a thousand years and which has survived intact up to the present; and (v): the entire landscape of the Tokaj wine region, including both vineyards and long established settlements, vividly illustrates the specialized form of traditional land use that it represents.
It is considered to synthesize the laws impacting the landscape and heritage conservation: 1) Act LIII of 1996 on the protection of the en vironment; 2) Act XXI of 1996 on territorial planning and development; 3) Act CXXI of 1997 on the viticulture and wine commercialization; 4) Act XXVI of 2003 on the elaboration of a national territorial plan, 1) The law on the protection of environment precise the conditions of the management of the natural areas. 6827 ha of the region is under this protection, divided into 2 areas and 6 zones managed by the National Parc of Aggtelek. One part of the protected area belongs to the Natura 2000 network and it is part of the Ramsar Convention.
2-3) The law on the territorial planning and development specifies the organization and the regulation of the territory on the local and national level. This law orders the elaboration of a National Territorial Plan. The definition and the structure of this Plan are detailed in the Act XXVI of 2003. In addition to the Plan, the law on the territorial planning mentions the specificities of the World Heritage sites.
4) The law on the viticulture and commercialization regulates the planting, cultivation, cutting out vineyards, the production and commercialization of wine products, the system of their registration, and the administrative tasks related to viticulture and wine production.

The straw burning power plant at the heart of the local conflict
Alongside of the tasks since 2005 concerning the Act LXIV of 2001 on the Protection of Cultural Heritage, the following event accelerated the process of the designation of a historical landscape in Hungary. In Tokaj wine region, the heart of the conflict was indeed a project to construct a 49.9 MW straw burning power plant on the south of the World Heritage site in the buffer zone, on the outskirts of the town of Szerencs, on a 6.5 ha large area. On the 3 December 2008, 9 villages within two towns were threatened to be excluded from the World Heritage site: Abaujszanto, Erdöhorvati, Golop, Legyesbénye, Szerencs are situated in the buffer zone and Bodrogkisfalud, Mezözombor, Szegi and Tallya situated on the property. An authorisation has been given by the Environmental Agency of the Region of Northern Hungary to construct the power plant. The project was later cancelled, because of the legal framework of the Regional Territorial Plan. The plan forbids the construction of heavy industrial equipment on the World Heritage site (Briffaut, Brochot 2010: 156). The cancellation of this project is due to several reasons. The principal building of the proposed straw burning power plant was 34 m high which has been judged oversized. Moreover, the proposed technology was inappropriate in the given environmental context where the type of the agriculture to operate the power plant did not exist.
The investors foresee to bring the straw from the plain known as Alföld. The plain is situated around 100 km away from the Tokaj wine region. In addition to the long distance, the produced fuel would have been transported with trucks, giving rise to an increased traffic, with an additional 20 000 vehicle per year (100 trucks per working day). Several associations such as Tokaj Renaissance or Association for the World Heritage pointed out their fear concerning the production of the wine which needs a specific microclimate for the botrytisation of the grapes. Thus, the quality of the wine would deteriorate. (Briffaut, Brochot 2010: 156) Despite the prevention of the environmental impact and the wine production, 9 settlements requested to quit the World Heritage site due to the high regulation required, the basis of their discontent. Some of the mayors placed their hopes in the construction of the straw burning power plant because of its economic potential. The industry in the region had seen a significant activity until the communist period. The mayors projected the start of the reindustrialisation process which could produce job opportunities to locals, in an area where the unemployment rate is one of the highest in Hungary (KSH 2006). After the events, the Hungarian National Commission for UNESCO reached out to the World Heritage Center. Consequently, a Complex Impact Assessment has been elaborated in December 2008 on the cultural heritage and landscape. The document was prepared by a bureau working in the environmental field. Eventually, the project was completely abandoned.

Towards a spatial protection of the Tokaj wine region
However, the debates are not limited to the question of the project of the straw-burning power plant, but it stretches out other tensions already existing in the region. For example, the increase of the truck circulation from/to Romania and Bulgaria since their accession to the European Union, or a project of a central hydraulic in the valley of Aranyos, or another project of a coal-burning thermic power plant in Slovakia only 17 km away from the World Heritage site, and last but not the least, the dispute concerning the designation of the origin of Tokaj wines in Slovakia (Soós 2009). It is also worth mentioning the debates concerning the Natura 2000 zone, and the influence of mines, quarries and other mineral exploitation industries. There are 21 mines and quarries in operation in the region on the World Heritage site. Although, they are not officially taking part within the World Heritage site, paradoxically a few of them are in the heart of the property. There are about a thousand people who are employed in the industry (Megalapozo dokumentácio Tokaj-Hegyalja Történelmi Borvidék Kulturtáj Világörökségi helyszín 2014: 132). The mines contribute to the economy of the region, but at the same time, they have a considerable impact on the landscape. In parallel with the mines, the Natura 2000 zone is also a source of conflict between winegrowers and the National Park of Aggtelek concerning the protection of the environment and the potential winegrowing development. These areas are often considered as the best terroir. The question of the boundaries of the World Heritage property and its buffer zone are also worth mentioning. According to the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention, it is necessary for the protection of the site to identify a core and buffer zone in order to safeguard the criteria decisive for the inscription such as the definition of the Outstanding Universal Value including the conditions of integrity and/or authenticity. The core zone represents the property. The buffer zone is defined as the area around the property to ensure the protection of the site. The boundaries of the site follow the official border of the Tokaj wine region as per the Act CXXI of 1997 on the viticulture and wine commercialization assigning an official and protected designation of origin label to production of Tokaj wines. Following this logic, 9 settlements (Tokaj, Tarcal, Mezozombor, Bodrogkeresztúr, Tallya, Mad, Ratka, Szegi, Bodrogkisfalud) and 6 caves (Ungvari in Satoraljaujhely, Rakoczi in Sarospatak, Gombos-hegyi and Koporosi in Hercegkut, Oremus and the ones in the Museum in Tolcsva) have been indicated as being part of the core zone. This division of the wine region into two parts set up a system of prioritisation of the region. The definition of the boundaries contributes to symbolic, administrative and financial debates between the municipalities and the central services embodied in the figure of Budapest. The division also changed the vision of the territory, especially of the mayors, by calculating and associating funds to the two different zones since the public call of subsidies such as GINOP 7.1.6.-16 Developement of World Heritage sites, depends on the location in relation to the World Heritage property. In Hungary, like in many other countries, competition exists between territories in order to obtain a financial investments from national and/or European funds.
As demonstrated in the work of Briffaud and Brochot, a certain local interest emerged with regard to the heritage conservation and regulation on a larger scale. The debates formed a new category of local actors whose objective was, in particular, to defend local heritage. The different conflicts showed in the first place the weakness of the Management Plan of the World Heritage Site elaborated in 2003. The plan did not have any legal function. In the second place, the existing protection was judged by the local civil society and several municipalities as legally insufficient to cover the Tokaj wine region, otherwise a straw-burning power plant project of this size would not have been proposed. It must be noted that the inscription on the World Heritage List does not endow any legal status to the site. The authorities carried out actions on the basis of the common law. Following the dilemmas, the authorities on the national level accelerated the procedures in order to take legal measures for the protection of the World Heritage within the national legal framework. The World Heritage legal status has been questioned not only concerning the Tokaj, but also with regard to seven other Hungarian sites (Old Village of Hollókő and its Surroundings, Budapest, including the Banks of the Danube, the Buda Castle Quarter and Andrássy avenue, Millenary Benedictine Abbey of Pannonhalma and its Natural Environment, Caves of Aggtelek Karst and Slovak Karst, Ferto/Neusiedlersee Cultural Landscape, Hortobagy National Parc, Early Christian Necropolis of Pécs). In consequence, a Law on World Heritage has been adopted in 2011 in order to translate the Management Plan as a legal tool.
The The decree considers 27 settlements as part as the official administrative area of the Tokaj wine region under the protection of Historical Monuments:Abaújszántó, Bekecs, Bodrogkeresztúr, Bodrogkisfalud, Bodrogolaszi, Erdőbénye, Erdőhorváti, Golop, Hercegkút, Legyesbénye, Makkoshotyka, Mád, Mezőzombor, Monok, Olaszliszka, Rátka, Sárazsadány, Sárospatak, Sátoraljaújhely, Szegi, Szegilong, Szerencs, Tarcal, Tállya, Tokaj, Tolcsva, Vámosújfalu. There are more than 200 Historical Monuments inside 700 to 800-year-old caves in the territory. However, the decree increased the number of the Historical Monuments to 90,000. The declaration of the historical landscape on the wine region expresses the aim of the protection: "to preserve the historic built and natural environment as well as to conserve the traditional land use methods.
The cultural values that the landscape may enhance should be used in a sustainable way." The Act underlines that a partially built-up area, as a topographically demarcated unit of cultural significance (historical, architectural, artistic, scientific etc.) and as a result of the combined work of human activity and nature, gains the protection of Historical Monuments. The publication of the decree represents a sort of first step to define a regional policy according to the member of the National Assembly for Satoraljaujhely: The historical landscape is the basis to apply the World Heritage law in January 2012 because we need to ensure the protection on a national level of every World Heritage site. This protection is the historical landscape in the case of the Tokaj region. We needed this, to define a regional development policy and to incorporate the cultural values in the economic development and employment creation. In this way we avoid regional conflicts, like the project of the straw-burning power plant. (Richard Hörcsik, deputy, Zemplén TV, 22 February 2012) Indeed, the historical landscape recognised the World Heritage boundaries as legal ones, inscribed from this point forward in the Hungarian legislation. In this sense, the decree on historical landscape has the potential to turn the region from its territorial division between the buffer and the core zones into an integral region having equal values. Nevertheless, further modification has not been made yet concerning the regulations on the protection of Historical Monuments. We underline, the recommendations made in the World Heritage Management Plan elaborated in 2016 after the adoption of the Law on World Heritage. The Management Plan, which lays out the actions for 6 years on the World Heritage Site, recommends the creation of a precise object and regulations concerning the historical landscape. The object of the protection should be in parallel with the Outstanding Universal Values of the Tokaj wine region. We can observe at this stage of the study that the historical landscape, as a legislative tool, has been connected with the Outstanding Universal Values of the World Heritage site.

Conclusion
The notion of the historical landscape, used in the discipline of historical geography since the end of the 19th century, has been adopted as a legal tool to protect spatial area with a concern with heritage conservation in Hungary, as a special object of protection of Historical Monuments. Heritage preservation proved to be an important tool in a moment of high tension as it showed in the case of the project of the straw-burning power plant. The event demonstrated a rapidly emerging civil society involving local winemakers and municipalities to safeguard cultural and natural heritage in order to claim for a national legal framework for the World Heritage site. The demonstration against the project brought on the surface a set of issues already persisting in the region. The decree on the historical landscape, keyword of our article, was a pretext to study the question of the protection on a broader area. The aim of the article was to present the institutional background of the introduction of the notion of the landscape into heritage conservation and to analyse the conceptions linked to it in the case of Hungary, and in particular of the Tokaj wine region. Influenced by European and extra-EU approaches, the European Landscape Convention, accelerated the adoption of landscape in territorial planning and heritage conservation. Second, beyond the European conception, the values of landscape had been linked to the Outstanding Universal Values in the case of the Tokaj wine region as a World Heritage site. In consequence, the boundaries of the site got inscribed in a national legal frame. However, the intense institutional changes concerning the cultural heritage protection since 2000, probably affected the administrative process to define the object of the protection of historical landscape on a national level. Without application decree in the case of the Tokaj wine region, the term remains general.