Developments in Public Procurement in Hungary – Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

The article provides a brief overview of the status of public procurements, made relevant by the 20th anniversary of the introduction of the public procurement system in Hungary and the entry into force of the new Act on Public Procurement on 1 November 2015. It is intended to present the backbone of public procurement statistics released in the past 20 years to give an insight into the most important trends in Hungarian public procurements. Another goal of the study is to outline the structure of public procurement regulations and the relevant institutional system and to point out the most prominent novelties of the new Public Procurement Act. Statistics and trends are examined with the assistance of charts and tables. The novelties of the Public Procurement Act are presented by analysing the text of the legislation and by providing a summary of the relevant rules, and the institutional system is described by using a similar method. Readers gain an insight into the situation of public procurements through an analysis that is not only easy to utilise but that can also serve as a point of reference on the subject of the Public Procurement Act and the relevant institutional system.