Europeanising Hungarian Waste Policies: Progress or Regression?

The hope that prevailed immediately after the collapse of state socialism was that Eastern Europe’s environmental pollution would be ‘swept away by democracy and economic rationality’. This chapter reviews past waste policies in the EU and Hungary and analyses the challenges brought on by joining the EU. It compares requirements for sustainable development and for satisfying requirements for EU accession. Environmental modernisation theory in itself does not say anything about absolute volumes of waste or emissions, power, social costs, and the role of the public. With this critical note, the chapter suggests that ecological modernisation theory can offer us a vantage point from which to interpret the implications of Hungary’s accession to the EU for its waste practices. Until the mid-1990s, post-socialist legislative events, and actual waste practices conformed more to the economic rationalism model than to the ecological modernisation paradigm.