The Tisza Watershed is an integrant environmental, social and economic unit. Apart from geographical, ecological, cultural and social resemblance, there is a definitive interdependence among the inhabitants of the region (floods, water pollution, trade, migration, etc.). The extent of the Tisza Watershed is about 154.039 km2, embracing five countries (Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Ukraine), its population is app. 15.7 million.

Due to the expansion of the European Union, this interdependence will get stronger. In response, the local governments of the region began discussions in 1995, and, after several reconciliatory talks, along with central governments of the involved countries they agreed in Szeged, 2000 about the need for a common background-institution functioning on national level in order to formulate and operate the IT and technological infrastructure required for concordance.

The RETC is in close connection with IHLET. It was founded to provide the infrastructure for co-operation. As a fulfilment of the covenant in 2001, RETC organises and plans financial aspects of establishing local organi-sations on micro-regional association level.

The document titled "Johannesburg Declaration about Sustainable Development" confirms that the three, inseparable pillars of sustainable development are protection of environment, conomic and social development.

The IHLET achieves goals which assist the involved settlements in creating their plans for environmental protection and economic development. The Tisza Watershed is not only a geographical unit, but also a system based on environmental, economic and social resemblances and interdependencies. The solution of common spatially related questions of this system inevitably requires commonly usable spatial data supply, thus GIS based data management is the fundamental part of the information system. The basis of the operation of IHLET is to create a network of public benefit companies capable of setting the standards for decision making in local governments and to apply these standards, together with the involved local governments, in national level administration processes.

IHLET wishes to operate a monitoring system in the watershed, which (as part of the above mentioned decision support system) will provide opportunity to intervene on inter-national level in case of water quality problems, occurring ever more frequently.

The network of offices currently developing with assistance from RETC will consist of 48 self-supporting, fully fledged agencies. In order to achieve this, their structure and legal status is about the same, regardless of national boundaries. The cross-border project concept wishes to use primarily its own resources regarding the spatial and legal characteristics of the participating countries, in addition to which it counts on international subsidies as supplemental funding. IHLET aims for selfsupportiveness through economy-organising and enterprise development activities, which means that regional and state subsidies do not help operation but rather R+D and infrastructure development.

On Nov 18th, 2000 the participants signed an international agreement concerning the creation and financing of the office network. The owners of offices would be the participating local governments, universities, civil organisations, and 51 % would be in the hands of IHLET. Yearly operational costs of the offices consist of the following items. The local (founding) governments include 30 % in their yearly budget. 20 % comes from various applications in the national governments' subsidising structure. 30 % would come from international subsidies required for international (common) tasks of project construction. 20 % would originate from the IHLET's business activities.