Professional training of civil servants working for the regional authorities belonging to the Ministry of Environment and Water, Hungary

This project assisted Hungary’s accession to the EU at the time by helping the professionals through the educational and training program to familiarize and learn the methods required for the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) in Hungary.

It strengthened the institutional and professional capacities in the field of water related activities of regional authorities, which played a very important role within the implementation of Water Framework Directive. The project contributed towards the Improvement of distribution capacity of new methodologies in the field of water for the participants in the administration in Hungary.

Hungary, landlocked in central Europe and with a population of 10.5 million people, is bordered by seven countries and divided in three by the Danube and the Tisza, two major rivers. The country's crown jewel is the dazzling capital city of Budapest. Hungary is a mostly flat country, dominated by the Great Hungarian Plain east of the Danube. Rivers and water resources play a main role in the country. Rivers run along 2.800 kilometers and a grid of inland water channels connects the country through 8.500 kilometers. The largest lake is Balaton, also known as the “Hungarian Sea”, since with it’s almost 600 square kilometers area it is the largest lake in Central Europe. Even before Hungary joined the European Union in May 2004, Governments made clear in several statements that meeting the guidelines of the European Water Framework Directive was a prior strategy.

As consequence, several initiatives were undertaken to bring Hungary up to speed with the EU directive. This project was one of the most relevant initiatives. The training of 160 water and environmental experts working for the administration in Hungary was carried out in the frame of this project. The project enjoyed a total budget of 275.900 Euros. The consortium was composed by UNESCO-IHE, ECORYS and Grontmij (Dutch partners) and Budapest University of Technology and Economics and the Regional Environmental Centre (Hungarian partners).

The program focused on the following topics: characterization of river basins, monitoring, economic analysis, identification of the environmental objectives, public participation, international river basin management planning, wetland management and relevant policies of the European Union.

The strength of the course relied on enabling participants to discuss the requirements and difficulties of the implementation from different fields of expertise and diverse approaches, since among the participants selected for the course, there were civil servants from the Ministry of Environment and Water, National Environmental, Nature Conservation and Water Authority, from the 12 Regional Environmental and Water Directorates, the 12 Regional Environmental, Nature Conservation and Water Inspectorates and the 10 National Park Directorates. The training focused on the practical approaches for the implementation of the directive and a series of case studies were displayed, maintaining the motivation of the participants ensuring that the skills that were developed contributed to the efficiency in their day-to-day work.

This project trained a total of 160 water and environmental experts working for the Hungarian administration sector, in the practical aspects of the European Water Framework Directive. The program ran for groups of 20 professionals, with a total workload of four weeks, 128 hours for each of the 8 groups.

Since this training course was provided in Hungarian, the Budapest University of Technology and Economics with highly experienced experts (some of them advisers of different European bodies) were a key partner in the preparation and implementation of the training.

All the training materials developed for this course were made available for the participants during the training and for experts at the Hungarian Ministry of Environment and Water website at the end of the program.