Historical Overview of Environmental Protection in Hungary from the Austro–Hungarian Compromise to the Present Day

Abstract

When examining the various levels of public administration, the question arises as to how the tasks of today’s public administration have evolved in relation to environmental protection. The present study will show how the main historical events in our country have been accompanied by the main environmental administrative acts. How the environmental administration and its institutional system have evolved, and how and in response to what societal impacts the main environmental legislation has developed. My aim was to show how administrative tasks have been affected by political, economic and historical influences and how they have evolved. In order to keep the overview within certain limits, I will look at the development of environmental protection from the time of the Compromise to the present day, as I did in an earlier article. In view of the complexity of the subject, only the institutions with specific environmental responsibilities will be described, without claiming to be exhaustive. In the course of the research, a number of contemporary legal texts, newspaper articles, historical and archival publications have been reviewed. The present study is intended as a supplement to the article entitled A Historical Overview of the Development of Water Management in Hungary from the Restoration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the Present Day. The article clearly shows that there is a close connection between social, economic and political phenomena and the administrative processes of the time.