Our mission

The Hungarian Environmental Partnership Foundation aims at enhancing the development of an environmentally aware, participatory democratic society and institutional system by strengthening and supporting the civil environmental movements.

The foundation promotes the development of the environmental movement trough providing grants, training, fellowships and technical assistance where necessary.

The most significant laws that concern civil organizations and which resulted from advocacy activities of civil organizations (2003–2006)

The functioning of civil organizations is not under a general regulation in Hungary, it can be regarded as an aggregate of provisions of several acts. Thus HEPF aimed to amend not the whole system but concentrated and reacted on the actual legislation plans and draft bills. In this special environment it is important that significant acts were passed in the period of 2003–2006. It can be stated, that the legislative material in this period not only has been amended, but also renewed, as there haven’t been such outstanding, significant changes in the operative acts before 2003, as in the above-mentioned period. In the following, legislation concerning civil organizations that was adopted or came into effect and resulted from the advocacy of the civil organizations – inter alia of HEPF – will be presented.

Relevant legislation

1. Acts
   1. Act L of 2003 on the National Civil Fund
   2. Act LXXXVIII of 2005 on Voluntary Activities in the Public Interest
   3. Act XC of 2005 on the Freedom of Electronic Information
2. Governmental decrees
   1. Governmental decree 160/2003 (X.7.) on the Implementation of National Civil Fund
   2. Governmental decree 18/2005 (II.10.) on the Amendment of the Governmental degree 160/2003 (X.7.) about National Civil Fund
   3. Governmental decree (170/2006) (VII: 28) on the scope of duties and competences of the Minister of Social Affairs and Employment
3. Other decrees
   1. Decree of Minister of Justice 35/2004 on the Procedural Rules of the Registration of Social Organizations 6/1989 (VI.8.)
   2. Decree of Minister of Justice, and on the Amendment of Decree of Minister of Justice 12/1990 (VI. 13.) On the Procedural
   3. Rules of the Registration of Foundations.

I. The National Civil Fund

The Hungarian Parliament enacted the Act L of 2003 on the National Civil Fund on 23 June 2003 (NCA Act) that was announced in the Official Journal on 10 July 2003. The Fund signifies an important reform in the operation of civil society organizations in two respects. First, in order to strengthen the sector, the Fund has introduced a new method of financing civil society organizations. Second, the existence of this act means a great progress for the civil society organizations, as – through the legal institution of the so-called civil electoral system – they are able to participate in the distribution of the civil resources. This way, the Act on NCA has been the most significant act for civil society organizations since the change of regime.

The NCA Act is the first legislation that regulates how much state support civil society organizations can receive. Thanks to this, the budget adds to each Forint of the collected 1% of the personal income tax offers one more Forint, thus duplicating the sum of the offers. In theory, the financial resource of the NCA could even be wider including budgetary targeted grants as well as voluntary donations. This means that the Fund – disposing of a continuously increasing budget – distributes one part of the taxes paid (completing it by the resources coming from the current budget) in a form of open calls for proposals, which will result in strengthening of the civil sector in the foreseeable future.

The financial resources of the NCA may be used – among others – to support the following: operation and public interest activities of civil society organizations, research related to the civil sphere, support of civil interest representations. Beneficiaries can be – apart from parties, insurance companies, churches and trade unions – all civic organizations (except state-founded public foundations). In the case of associations and foundations it is a requirement that the Court registers the applicant organization one year prior to applying for a grant. Grants can only be given to applications that meet the formal criteria.

The NCA Act is completed by the Governmental decree 160/2003 (X.7.) (In the following: Implementation decree). From a practical point of view, the Implementation decree is more important because it contains an annex concerning the participation in the civil electoral system.

An Implementation decree (18/2005 (II.10.) has modified this Governmental decree in 2005, amending almost all chapters, however, the previous one as a whole was not affected generally by the modification, thus the grantmaking-system – which gives its backbone – and the civil electoral system have not been changed. The modification rather concerned the details of the regulation of the implementation decree, and not its principles. There are articles modified that concern specific expressions, and others that more precisely define the deadlines or obligatory data of the annexes to be submitted. Such is for example the legal institution of allowing applicant organizations to supply missing documents during the process that has been made more detailed and precise by the Government.

II. Freedom of information by electronic means

Besides the NCA Act, the Act on the Freedom of Information by Electronic Means has an outstanding importance for civil society organizations for two reasons: on one hand the act was made with their constructive contribution, and on the other, its functioning will greatly benefit them in the long term. The act has envisaged that codifier institutions: the National Assembly, the Ministries, municipalities and Courts (as codifier institutions) make their codifying, law-making and decision-making practices transparent on their webpage. The act also requires the publishing of internal working papers and their development preceding the codifying. From the point of view of the civil organizations, the act is very important as it gives guarantee that they will have the opportunity – by using the instruments of the 21st century – to have an insight into the processes of legislation moreover the ability to comment and criticize this. This right can be practiced thanks to the paragraph 61. § (2) Of the Constitution, and the Act LXIII of 1992 on the Protection of Personal Data and Public Access to Data of Public Interest. Thus the legal institution of social dialogue – that is foreseen as obligatory in the 1987 Act XI on Codification – has received a completely new form in the 21st century.

The civil sector has set forth serious advocacy activity related to the birth of the Act, and its significance is also increased by the fact that this new regulation is not only in the interest of the civil sector but that of the whole society. We repeat it almost as a cliché, that amongst and besides different material goods, information has the greatest value, thus nowadays the freedom of information has become a re-valued right for the different members of society.

For this reason the provision defining that civil society organizations and any citizen is entitled to become acquainted with the legislation, also in their stage of drafts, and can offer an opinion towards the codifier – is of outstanding importance. This way the interest representation of civil organizations is sped up and becomes more transparent.

It has to be noted, that in practice codifier institutions do not fully comply with the Act; after it came into effect – contrary to expectations – it did not bring the desired results. This became evident during the regular monitoring work carried out by the NOSZA program with HEPF’s support. At the same time, we do think – and our view is confirmed by the prospective, positive tendencies – that since its coming into effect, the codifiers tried to take the obligatory instructions seriously and increasingly aim to comply with them.

III. Voluntary activities in the public interest

The Act on Voluntary Activities in the Public Interest signified a new step for civil society organizations towards taking social responsibility and becoming more accepted by the society. As volunteers do contribute – also according to statistical data – to the operation of civil organizations in a significant way, it has become crucial that the legal institution received a legal framework – and this is primary ensured by the law. There has been voluntary activity also before the existence of this Act, but this only meant voluntary activity relying on unwritten law. It was necessary to abolish unwritten law because of the need to comply with the requirements of finance laws and accountancy acts: it was important not to list voluntary contributors to those employees, who the organization has to pay taxes and contributions after; but also it was significant that differences between volunteers and employees are more apparent.

The Act does not define the notion of volunteers and the so-called host organizations, but lists those persons and organizations, which are entitled to be volunteers and hosts. From the listing of the host organizations it can be seen, that the scope of this law does not cover all civil society organizations; at the same time, besides them, several other types of organizations can employ volunteers. Amongst civil society organizations, only public benefit ones can be host organizations. A volunteer can be practically every natural person who is older than 10 years.

An agreement – the details of which are also described in the Act – comes into force between the host organization and the volunteer. Similar to the Labor Code and other regulations related to Labor Act, it defines the detailed rules of voluntary work, for example working periods correlating with the age of the volunteer, and it also regulates cases of termination of the agreement.

To regulate this question by guaranties is of absolute necessity, as labor and the result of labor is in close relation with human rights, and is only one step far from the prohibition of free labor. Thus labor can only be free, when guarantees – included in the Voluntary Act – are provided. This way the act is of great importance from the view of civil organization and civil organizing.

IV. Governmental allocation of the issue of NGOs

The issue of civil organizations is located between the fields of social affairs and equal opportunities. The Government – as it can bee seen from the legislation, the number and relevance of governmental decrees – gives more and more attention to legislation related to civil organizations. Civil departments, professional staff occupied with civil issues are present in each of the ministries, thus in every horizontal entity of the Government. Codification related to civil organizations however – from an organizational point of view – is at the moment not concentrated in one hand; it is divided up into topics.

Civil organizations, civil partnership, and civil social dialogue do only appear in one governmental decree on the scope of duties and competences of the Minister of Social Affairs and Employment. The Minister of Social Affairs and Employment is responsible in the Government for the development of social and civil relations; he prepares decisions related to the civil partnership policy and participates in the elaboration of regulation concepts belonging to the competence of other Ministries. In his responsibility to promote social and civil relations, the Minister especially prepares any regulation related to the sectoral interest representation, support of civil society organizations, voluntary activity in the public interest and regulations about the operation of associations – except public education associations operating with the participation of members of public education institutions – moreover on the basis of the authorization of a law or governmental decree, he delivers ministerial decrees.

V. Amendment of the procedural rules of registration

The Minister has decided to amend the two Minister of Justice decrees on the procedural rules of the registration in 2004. The Ministry did not wish to carry out general changes on the decrees, thus they were amended to incorporate the changes that came into effect during the years.

Data protection in the case of associations means that non-public data has to be separated, according to the decree, put and managed “in a closed envelope”. In the case of foundations the Court issues – as a consequence of the amendment – by the claim of the representative an extract about “registered and actual data” of the foundation.

VI. Other advocacy activities

Our advocacy activities were not only orientated towards the above listed and introduced laws in the period of 2003–2006, but also towards the amendment of the act on public finance and the creation of an act on public contracts.

We have considered the amendment of the Act on Public Finance as extremely justified, as the framework regulation for financing distributed by the ministers did not meet the current transparency criteria and did not comply with the civil interests. The ministers could freely decide on the financial framework, which was foreseen for them by the chapter based budget estimates. The Act was not amended because – among others – the campaign made it impossible for the issue to be dealt with.

The draft bill on public contracts was a public law reflection of the so-called outsourcing of state tasks, which would have given an opportunity to civil organizations to provide public services, by outsourcing activities that NGOs would have been able to implement. This initiative however has not yet been realized; the Government is expected to submit the bill to the National Assembly later this year.