Fazekas M. – Tóth I. J.. (2014), New ways to measure institutionalised grand corruption in public procurement. U4 Policy Brief, October 2014 No 9, CMI-U4.

Public procurement, one of the largest areas of public spending worldwide, gives public officials wide discretion. It is therefore unsurprising that it is also one of the government functions most often vulnerable to corruption. While there have been many qualitative accounts of high-level corruption in public contracting, it is only recently that read more

The report empirically analyses information disclosure practices on 368 municipalities’ webpages in 2013 from the viewpoint of transparency, accountability, and informing citizens. The analysis is based on the laws regulating information disclosure in Hungary. The report measures the degree to which municipalities’ webpages abide by the prescriptions of these laws. The empirical results show that it is the lack of transparency and neglecting legal prescriptions which characterises urban settlements; read more

The transparency of government funding of the media is an essential element of the freedom of expression. However, this transparency is weak in the Hungarian media. The Hungarian media relies heavily on government advertisement spending. The public advertising orders can determine the fate of a media company. This dependency can threaten the freedom of the press since the government has the means to influence media content.  This report has been prepared to describe the role of state purchases in read more

March 29, 2014

Some information published in the Public Procurement Bulletin (e.g., call for bids, tender results) is inaccurate. In cases when the Public Procurement Board (PPB) is informed about the error, for example, by the issuer, a correction notice is published subsequently (e.g., rectification or modification) (regulations related to this are NFM 14/2010 [October 29th], and in NFM 92/2011 [December 30th]). Nevertheless, in some cases, the original, incorrect announcement is read more