Corporate Social Responsibility in Hungary

In this chapter the different drivers of CSR policy and activities are highlighted, and the present state of CSR in Hungary is described. The chapter is structured in the following way: after a short introduction to CSR in general and in the EU (first part), the study introduces the history and present state of CSR policy in Hungary, which has been highly influenced by EU-level policy and Hungary’s EU membership. This (second) part presents the main sources of legislation: especially the Hungarian National Action Plan on CSR. Afterwards it discusses the Action Plan’s main topics and priorities, as well as its connections to the EU-level CSR policy, and finally describes to what extent the Action Plan meets the expectations of the business sector. Furthermore, an explanation is provided as to why responsible employment constitutes the main vertical priority of the Action Plan, and why economic development and environmental protection related issues are given lesser importance. The third part of the chapter reviews recent research on the main topics, motivators and obstacles of CSR in the Hungarian business sector. The emergence of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the issue of sustainability as such have enabled companies to take a holistic approach to CSR and have also provided new challenges for them to meet. In the scope of the pertaining discussion, explicit and implicit forms of CSR are distinguished. In the fourth part of the chapter, diverse trends of sustainabilitySustainabilityreporting reporting are described in their capacity as the main communication and disclosure tool of CSR. During the economic crisis many companies discontinued to issue such reports, but the topic got a new impetus when sustainability reporting was linked with the EU legislation at the end of 2016, when Hungary adopted the Directive on disclosure of non-financial and diversityDiversity information (2014/95/EU). Finally, it is observed that in Hungary the pressure from stakeholders is weak, and they expect increased state-level intervention and control in CSR issues. Furthermore, companies’ motivational drivers are not clear: business caseBusiness case related considerations seem to preserve their continued importance. As for international initiatives, SDGs are the newest and they have been gaining significance since their appearance; even so the shift from explicit to implicit CSR is only partly visible.