Here is the bill, without János Lázár, almost nothing will be built in Hungary or with state funds
Anna Szalai;
Hungary; János Lázár; construction; approval;
2023-01-17 20:50:00
Most of the municipal projects were also controlled by the state.
The Ministry of Construction and Transport page can already be read the bill that gives local governments a completely new role in the implementation of larger projects.
Shortly after taking office, János Lázár announced that he was drafting a new investment law, ended one-step public procurement and regulated the pass-through of the increase in the price of building materials. The promise at the time was about an introduction on January 1st, but the draft was only posted on the ministry’s website last week.
As can be read in the justification, the draft law intends to put the system of state construction investments on a new basis and unify it. It would make the implementation of state construction investments more efficient and create more predictable legal relationships. The goal is for Hungary to be at the forefront of Europe in terms of successful public construction investments by 2030. Although it is not crystal clear how this would be implemented by law.
In any case, according to the description, the legislation re-regulates the entire “life cycle” of public construction investments, from preparation to planning and execution to operation and maintenance, with particular regard to cost-effectiveness and the value-benefit approach. As they write: for the development of the professional concept, proposals were solicited from a total of 26 professional organizations and state actors, and 900 comments were received. Certainly, many people would like to know whose mind it was to bring municipalities under full “investment guardianship”.
which this year is EUR 5,382,000, i.e. HUF 1,883,592,360. The national public procurement value limit, however, according to the Public Procurement Authority’s presidential briefing in January this year, is 50 or 100 million forints, depending on the contracting entity. The scope of the law does not cover everyone, so business associations, civil and church organizations, national governments, trust foundations, nuclear energy investments and the Budapest-Belgrade railway are exceptions. The law classifies projects in a separate category and designates them as public construction projects, for the preparation and implementation of which central budget or non-EU funds are used and their amount is greater than fifty percent of the value of the project, regardless of whether the construction project is carried out for the benefit of the state. yes. However, only a few of the Hungarian settlements are able to start any kind of project without any kind of support. Taking all of this together – although it is not spelled out in the text – the law certainly also applies to local governments.
Investments covered by the law are supervised by the Ministry of Construction, from the time of preparation, and even from inclusion in the annual framework program submitted to the Orbán government to implementation, which also decides on the initiation of projects included in the approved framework program. If the investment is realized from new sources, the minister must be involved in the project as a consortium member.
Investments are managed by the project organization appointed by the minister, in addition to the minister, the designer, the contractor and others, there is also a person delegated by the mayor responsible for the local government according to the location of the investment, so his vote will be one out of a dozen.
And if that wasn’t enough, there is one more point that the local governments have to deal with, namely in relation to priority investment. The mayor or the mayor has 15 days to respond with a detailed justification, if the body appointed to implement the state project – and we see that almost all of them will – sends him a question or a proposed measure.
The most visible milestones in the reduction of local government autonomy are the successive amendments to construction legislation. After the Urban Image Protection Act, the government rearranged the public advertising market at will. With the transfer of building authority powers to government offices, all preliminary inspections will be abolished, the lack of obligation to notify neighbors has resulted in many, many building blocks erected on stilts. The powers of the construction authorities are less and less ensuring the implementation of the municipal development plans.
who builds what and how in their settlement.