This is the first representative public survey to examine the social perception of folk culture and folk art, as well as related consumption habits in Hungary; the 2026 Report presents the results of this survey in its first chapter. As a continuation of the 2025 Report, the 2026 Report includes an assessment of the impact of the Sándor Csoóri Program, this time focusing on Hungarian folk art communities beyond the border in Upper Hungary, Transylvania, Subcarpathia, and Vojvodina. The volume focuses first on the examination of folk crafts among the various fields of folk art. It examines the folk craft community and the operational and funding structures of its organizations. It places special emphasis on the issue of knowledge transfer in folk crafts, which simultaneously affects education, professional prestige, market success, and career planning.

More information on the 2026 Hungarian Folk Art Report and the full publication can be accessed here.

HETFA’s expert, Luca Koltai contributed to the 4th chapter, which analyses how different EU countries are adapting the Youth Guarantee Programme, the flagship policy of the European Commission for youth unemployment, relaunched in 2020. The chapter provides insight into the different ways of adaptation at the national level, with a special focus on how are they integrating the rural dimension in the proposed measures.

Another recently published article in the journal ‘Új Munkaügyi Szemle’, written by Koltai Luca and Katalin Bördős, experts of HETFA describes the details of the position of NEETs in Hungary, based on the research conducted under the Lost Millennials project coordinated by HÉTFA Research Institute. The Lost Millennials project is funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA and Norway Grants Fund for Youth Employment. The article is available here (in Hungarian).

The Lost Millennials project is funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA and Norway Grants Fund for Youth Employment.

The research was conducted with the involvement of all project partners and countries; hence data was collected from Finland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania (Transylvania), Serbia, Slovakia, and Spain (Andalusia).  More than six hundred (608) respondents completed the survey, which provides valuable insights into the experiences and responses of women entrepreneurs during the COVID-19 pandemic and the recovery phase after the pandemic (an era which can be described as a poly-crisis) shedding light on their resilience and adaptability in the face of challenges. Furthermore, interviews were conducted with 24 experts and 56 women entrepreneurs.

The experts highlighted that there should be targeted policies, support programmes and initiatives dedicated to women entrepreneurs, not only during crises but consistently and that these programmes should recognize and address the specific challenges women entrepreneurs face in business.

Similarly, the focus of the respondents’ stories extended beyond just COVID-19 and its impact. It encompassed all the other challenges they had faced since the last wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis presents in detail what are the challenges women entrepreneurs face in times of crisis, what are the strategies to employ and their needs for support.  

Not only challenges but learning and new opportunities characterise the post-Covid era. The women entrepreneurs gained valuable experiences, enhanced their skills to further professionalise their entrepreneurial activities, strengthened existing or started to build resilient communities, and seized new business opportunities within the constraints they faced during the crisis.

In recent months, our research findings have been disseminated across various platforms:

1. WORK2023 Conference
   • Date: 23-25 August 2023
   • Venue: Online & Turku, (FI)
   • The RE – FEM project partners shared initial cross-country research insights at the WORK 2023 conference on Digital Capitalism: Peril and Possibilities. Details
2. EmpowerHER Balaton
   • Date: 29-30 September 2023
   • Venue: Zánka (HU)
   • Our preliminary results were presented to women entrepreneurs and their professional network at the EmpowerHER Balaton event.
3. VOSZ Women Entrepreneurs Section Annual Meeting
   • Date: 11th October 2023
   • Venue: Budapest (HU)
   • Katalin Oborni presented research results as a keynote speaker and round table participant at the joint event organized by SEED Foundation and VOSZ.
4. Entrepreneurship Research Conference
   • Date: 16-17 November 2023
   • Venue: Budapest (HU)
   • Orsolya Gergely and Katalin Oborni presented the research, titled “Crises and responses – Women entrepreneurs and their businesses in the light of comprehensive international research,” at the annual conference of the Network of Economic Researchers and Analysts. Details
5. Hungarian Sociological Association Annual Conference
   • Date: 17-18 November 2023
   • Venue: Budapest (HU)
   • Our research on “The Impact of Crises on the World of Work: Challenges and Responses in the Sociology of Work” was presented in the section “From crisis to crisis” by Orsolya Gergely, Katalin Oborni, and Eszter Szőnyi. Programme
6. Danube Cup – Conference on Entrepreneurship Education
   • Date: 24-25 November 2023
   • Venue: Belgrade (SRB)
   • Sanja Popovic Pantic and Katalin Oborni presented in the section “Entrepreneurship in Practice – Effect of Covid-19 on Entrepreneurship.” Programme

The article can be downloaded here.

The article presents the changes of urban green networks by a case study of a Hungarian town, Veszprém, throughout its history. The analysis is based on historical (cadastral, military, topographical) maps, historical photo archives and statistical data. The authors compared the results of Veszprém with the Hungarian capital, Budapest, and European tendencies. The article highlights that Veszprém has diverged from European trends and highlights the specificities of its green spaces’ development. The article introduces the 5 characteristic periods (Organic growth, Stagnation, Pathfinding, Selective development, Postmodern) of population growth and green space development of Veszprém. In addition, the authors emphasize the problem of increasing artificial surfaces and decreasing urban green plots.

Photo credit: www.unsplash.com

The analysis formulating recommendations for national and local governments connected to economic policy defines 16 actions for measures. This includes both abstract regulations, starting from the topic of working conditions at home, through public space renewals and issues of logistics and land use interventions.

Below we present you a short English summary on the main findings of the report.

Click here to read the full Hungarian version of the report.

Background

The reopening is Janus-faced. On the one hand, the world wants to return to the pre-COVID-19 normalcy, and most want to resume life where it was interrupted in early March. Even when restarting business, it is rational to build cooperation on previously established relationships and previous investments. The “other face” of the restart is looking to the future – we are looking for what we can learn from the experiences of the crisis, how we can make our lives and operations more resilient and sustainable in the medium and long term.

The future also depends significantly on what we think today, where social, economic and natural processes will take us, and what individual, community, business and government investments we will make now in the midst of the crisis and beyond. Our present-day view on what future may bring will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The period following the peak of the epidemic should therefore be a period of creative rethinking, opening up for new opportunities and defining the future for individuals, communities, businesses, and the government.

In the case of Hungary, in international comparison, the quick government measures and the disciplined civic behaviour that complied with the restrictive rules made it possible to significantly slow down the spread of the epidemic and to quickly build up the missing health and epidemic management capacities. It has become clear that the ability for taking central and local actions is essential to manage well with the crisis. What is more, it is needed that state and local actors work together in a flexible and disciplined manner, which requires a high level of information flow. The extent of regional and local disparities and the effective management of community resources justify the preservation of local opportunities in territorial administration, which can be derived from the principle of subsidiarity.

In addition to the challenges of the epidemic, climate change has been also an important topic of public discourse. In recent decades, climate change – or, more broadly, sustainability issues – have become increasingly tangible and thus increasingly important in the debates of Western societies. There is no doubt that the current crisis will not solve these long-term problems (it will only divert our attention from it), but as we recover from the current epidemiological crisis, these problems and goals will once again be among the most important policy issues in public discourse.

When designing crisis management and reopening measures it is important to take into account the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Recommendations of the report therefore were drafted in accordance with the findings of the National Sustainable Development Framework Strategy on the sustainability situation and trends in Hungary.

Recommendation for Economic Policy

Instead of applying the traditional Keynesian demand stimulus, the report advises governments in general and governments of small, open economies in particular to manage their resources the following ways:

1. Providing jobs that pave the way for restructuring industries in the long run, increasing flexibility, adaptability and efficiency in the aftermath of the crisis.

• in case of companies, through technology investment and innovation support;
• in case of employees, with trainings and retraining;
• by supporting local collaborations that strengthen the fabric of society.

2. Being involved in the development of infrastructure and public service systems that reduce the vulnerability of exchanges and cooperation by

• supporting local business partnerships;
• increasing the epidemiological safety of public/community infrastructures;
• Improving the quality of local public/community infrastructures.

3. Implementing interventions to prevent the spread of epidemics and limit their spread and to improve the adaptability of society by:

• promoting a healthy, health-conscious lifestyle;
• increasing the proportion of ecologically valuable land and land uses;
• improving the productivity of natural resources (reduction of natural inputs and pollution) by exploiting the potential of the circular economy and the sharing economy;
• mitigating the effects of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for the effects of climate change, increasing our adaptive capacities

Recommendations for measures

In the light of the challenges posed by the current epidemic situation and the related economic policy context, the following proposals for measures are formulated, which are not exhaustive of all possibilities, but rather gathered as examples.

1. Active support for part-time work from home
2. Decentralization of leisure capacity
3. Conversion of underutilized / brownfield sites into a public parks
4. Securing wide sidewalks
5. Development of adaptive public spaces
6. Strengthening the adaptability of public transport
7. Actively supporting the online operation of traders and service providers
8. Aid for the purchase of electric vans and vans for freight transport companies
9. Support for building energy investments, energy-saving building renovations
10. Supporting the development of short supply chains in the food economy
11. Support for organic farming in agriculture
12. Support for land use change
13. Encourage domestic and / or regional tourism
14. Strengthening R&I capacities
15. Introduction of eco-taxes, launch of green tax reform
16. Promoting social responsibility and volunteering

Numerous articles have addressed how women cope with the difficulties of the coronavirus epidemic. These writings focused mainly on front-line health workers and mothers who experienced increased burdens at home following the closure of educational and health care institutions. At the same time, women who run businesses have received significantly less attention, even though they have been challenged in multiple ways in recent months.

The research by HETFA Research Institute, based on an online questionnaire survey and personal interviews, examined how Hungarian female entrepreneurs coped with the difficulties caused by the virus, both on the economic and family fronts. The online questionnaire was filled by 368 Hungarian female entrepreneurs.

Click here to read the research report in English.

(The report was published in Hungarian on Portfolio.hu)

Bálint Herczeg: Analysis of the institutional and social factors behind changes in the PISA test results

(only in Hungarian)

The study analyzes the trends in the results of PISA tests between 2006 and 2015. The study concludes that the negative trend might have been much steeper if the economic, social and cultural background of students had not improved in this period. Furthermore the change in the proportion of gender has also its impact. Negative trends in the results can be explained only to a small extent by the shift in proportion of different school types, the increasing number of problems concerning teaching staff and the decreasing autonomy of school directors.

Virág Zsár, Zsuzsanna Balázs, Enikő Virágh: Research management and administration: the relevance of special education and training programs

(in English)

The study presents analysis the current state-of-the-art of the profession of research managers and administrators (RMA). This in-depth analysis was carried out to check the feasibility and potential directions of an educational programme to be developed for RMA training underpinning the improvement of management capacities in the field of excellence-based research.

Tamás Szabó, Bálint Herczeg, Katalin Bördős: Investigating the factors influencing the entry into the export market and the size of the export volume in a micro simulation model

(only in Hungarian)

The study uses the Heckmann two-step estimator on a sample of 87,000 companies in the period between 2004 and 2018 to model the probability of entering foreign markets and the proportion of export in turnover. According to the results, previous export history, number of employees and productivity are the most determining factors.

Bálint Herczeg, Katalin Bördős, Viet Trinh: New ways to alleviate labour shortage by rethinking customer routes of the labour support system

(only in Hungarian)

The study examines the customer routes of all types of job-seekers based on data from 2016 provided by the National Employment Service. The results confirmed that the sequences of job-seekers and the tools and sevices offered by the labour support system vary based on the age and education of the job-seekers.

The studies were presented in the framework of the HÉTFA Conference which was transformed into an online event, given the new circumstances imposed by the global epidemic. The recording of the Zoom conference can be viewed on HÉTFA’s Youtube channel. The presentations of the lectures are available here.

The Conference was organized as part of the project “Research Strengthening the Capacity of Hungarian Public Policy-Making” supported by the Pallas Athene Domus Educationis Foundation.

]]> https://hetfa.eu/2020/03/vulnerable-groups-in-labour-organization-practice-new-article-by-luca-koltai-and-katalin-bordos/ Mon, 09 Mar 2020 14:18:08 +0000 https://hetfa.eu/?p=7721 An article under the title Vulnerable groups in labour organization practice; written by Luca Koltai and Katalin Bördős (Head of Division and Analyst of the the Division for Public Policy and Impact Assessment) was published in the latest issue of the Hungarian New Labour Review (Új Munkaügyi Szemle). The article summarizes the practical experience of employment departments with specific target groups of job-seekers, based on previous research and methodological guide prepared by HÉTFA. The research focused on youth under 25, unemployed elderly over 50 and and long-term unemployed.

According to the main findings of the article, the proportion of long-term unemployed facing significant disadvantages is increasing in the current labour market demand. They would need special support and services: for these target groups complex programmes combining multiple measures are the most effective, however, job centre workers do not have additional resources to help them.

The article can be downloaded here (only Hungarian).

The article describes the role of social enterprises and their opportunities in rural areas as well as in the local economy and in the organization of the local community. It also describes the experience of social enterprises with financial assistance programmes as well as their relationship with public employment and examines which difficulties these organizations face.

The article relies on the experiences of two previous research papers prepared by HÉTFA in 2018.

Réka Geambaşu (2017): Hungarian family businesses in abroad. ISSN 2062-378X

The quantitative research carried out by HÉTFA Research Institute in 2017 among Hungarian family companies operating in neighbouring countries (Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia) was initiated with the aim of providing a missing supplementary examination of the family business sector.

This paper examines the relationship between family and entrepreneurship, the role of involved human capital (mainly family members) in the operation of business, and other issues related to management, strategy and succession.