The percentage of recycling in Hungary rose from 19.6% in 2010 to 31.4% in 2021. This value is below the EU average (49.6%). At the same time, landfilling has also decreased significantly in the past two decades: while at the beginning of the 2000s, nearly sixty percent of the waste ended up in landfills, waste disposal in 2021 was 35% in Hungary, which is still higher than the EU average (18%). Therefore, there is still a need for development in these areas,2 in 2019 less than twenty-eight percent ended up in landfills.

Based on the regulation set forth in Act CLXXXV of 2012 on waste, waste management tasks were divided between the state and local governments. In the previous model, municipal waste management was a public task, i.e. it was the task of local governments to determine the detailed rules for waste management public services at the local level in their administrative area, as well as to select the waste management public service provider and conclude the public service contract with the selected twenty-eight public service providers. The coordination of the entire waste management system and the operation of the central invoicing system for the public service fee were provided by the state through a state-owned business association. In 2019, this model was changed, the Hungarian Government decided3 to switch to another type of task management. The main reason for this was that the person who collected, sorted and pre-treated waste was not the same as the person who then sold the waste on the market. The entire waste management system required continuous state funding. The basic objective of the newly developed Hungarian model is the achievement of EU goals, the effective sanctioning of illegal waste dumping, and the creation of an efficient recycling (infra)structure as a result of domestic innovations and developments. In the new model, the Hungarian legislator, in order to increase the efficiency of the Hungarian waste management system, brought the previous municipal tasks into the scope of state tasks and wanted to involve private parties in the performance of tasks within the framework of a concession procedure. In addition, the state also carries out tasks currently performed by market players; however, these tasks are not part of the public waste management service. In accordance with the concession rules, a public tender must be issued for the transfer of waste management concession rights. The application procedure must be initiated and the concession contract must be concluded in such a way that the public waste management service operating before the concession model and the waste management activities that are the subject of the concession are continuous and the transition to the concession model is unhindered.

The concession contract can be concluded for the period specified in the call for tenders, while its most important content elements are defined in the regulation on waste. According to this, the concession contract has to contain in particular the definition of the waste management public service sub-activity, the guarantee for its fulfilment, the annual target value defined in the legislation for individual waste streams falling within the scope of the given waste management public task in the waste management legislation. In addition, the regulation on waste ex lege defines the elements that are to become part of the contract, as well as the guarantee rules for terminating the contract. The concession company will be entitled to exercise its waste management rights if it guarantees that within 1 year from the signing of the concession contract, it will obtain the necessary license to carry out the activity and concludes the required contracts to ensure the capacity needed. In addition, it must be stated in the contract that the implementation of the rolling development system plans approved by the sector minister related to the performance of the public task of state waste management is also the obligation of the concession company.