Hungary

1. Policy

Act CXLIII of 2015 on Public Procurement includes the following RBC objectives:

Environment

Labour rights

People with disabilities

Long-term unemployed people

Integrity

2. Implementation

Pre-tender phase

• The procurement documents shall ensure that economic operators can submit tenders that are technically suitable, physically feasible and economically reasonable. The Procurement Act asks contracting authorities to design the tender in such a way that suppliers can perform the contract to a high standard, whilst protecting the environment, by taking into account not only sustainability considerations, but also the elimination of any contract amendments.

Tender phase

• According to the Procurement Act, the contracting authorities may exclude economic operators from participating in the tender if they have committed a serious violation of environmental, social, and labour law requirements.

• For public works, the technical specifications must consider the needs of the people with disabilities and the elderly during the preparation of the public procurement procedure. Following an initiative of the National Council of Associations of Persons with Disabilities (FESZT) in 2017, it has been mandatory to take into account the universal design criteria within the technical specifications for public works tenders.

Post-tender phase

• Contracting authorities may establish special conditions with regards to social (including unemployed persons or prisoners) or environmental considerations that must be observed for the duration of the contract.

3. Good Practices

• The Hungarian Public Procurement Authority launched a program called “Innovative Public Procurements in Focus 2019 - 2020” to promote innovative public procurement. In 2018, the Authority founded the Public Procurement Prize and the Public Procurement Excellence Award. On its mobile application titled “Daily Public Procurement”, the Authority shares up-to-date information related to public procurement.

• The Hungarian Public Procurement Authority issued a Guideline on Life Cycle Costing Calculation, maintains a website dedicated to sustainability and provides regular trainings to raise awareness about green and social public procurement and the integrity of public procurements.

• Since 2012, Hungary has been collecting information about contract award notices to develop statistics on green and social aspects in contract procedures below EU thresholds. This data is collected and published by the Public Procurement Authority in their annual reports.