Comparison Of Critical Transportation Infrastructure Of Food Supply In Hungary And Germany – Identifying Key Stakeholders

The pandemic caused by Covid 19, and the emergence of the Russian-Ukrainian war conflict have generated global implications, but primarily threats the stability in the European context. The key focus of this study is on the critical infrastructures (CI) and how a disruption in it can challenge the stakeholders of the food supply. Critical infrastructures are those systems that provide essential services to society (see defence, management of the economy, public health, and security of people), the failure or even their destruction would have a serious impact on the sustainability of the fundamental infrastructures of a country. The methodology applied is the exploration of the literature and available secondary data about critical infrastructures in Hungary and Germany as well as stakeholder mapping. The aim of this conceptual paper is to identify key stakeholders in case of a disruption in the critical infrastructure relevant for the food supply, especially focusing on the transportation related CI when studying Hungarian and German practices. The findings are compared based on the strong economical dependency of the two countries. Main finding of the study is that a model was used to categorize food supply stakeholders into 4 categories (supportive, marginal, mixed blessing, non-supportive). This categorization along 2 dimensions (stakeholder's potential for threat FSC's CI and stakeholder's potential for cooperation with FSC in CI) was developed and carries an important message for policy makers about who and in what processes can be involved in case of disruption. The research limitations include the number of examined critical infrastructures and the possibility of non-reachable information connected to topic hidden by the governments. The authors aim to continue the research and involve more European countries to the analysis.