On 9 December 2021, the National Council for Sustainable Development approved the Fourth Monitoring Report on the implementation of the National Framework Strategy on Sustainable Development. The Report was prepared on the basis of the guidelines of the Monitoring Handbook issued by HÉTFA Research Institute and with the assistance of the experts of HETFA .

The 4th Monitoring Report assesses the processes of 2019 and 2020. The report aims to examine the four pillars of sustainability (human, social, environmental and economic resources) and to assess the progress towards the objectives set by analysing current state of national capacities and opportunities.

Based on the 16 key indicators, it is clear that, although there have been many positive changes since the previous Monitoring Report, the pandemic has reduced the rate of improvement for many indicators and in some cases even reduced the value of the indicator. Of the 16 indicators, 9 scored below average or poor, which suggests that the state of sustainability in Hungary remains bad. The state of sustainability has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in several ways, thus the economic, social and environmental impacts of the pandemic were assessed as well.

The following policy recommendations were proposed:

  • Improvement of high level policy commitment to sustainability;
  • Stimulation of population policy;
  • Promotion of health conscious behaviours;
  • Improvement of quality education;
  • Economic stability;
  • Natural resource productivity and development of the circular economy;
  • Mitigation of climate change;
  • Protection of biodiversity
  • Water management.

The report is available on the following link (in Hungarian).

Source of picture: www.unsplash.com / Angela Loria