Economic Stagnation and Failed Environmental Reform in the 1970s

Abstract

In this chapter Pál explains the environmental protection reform plans and the limits of the environmental shift in Hungary in the 1970s. He concentrates on the interconnection among economics, technology, and environmental performance. Pál points out that Hungary’s failure to adjust to global structural change inevitably contributed to the underperformance of the country’s reformed environmental protection system in the 1970s. In this chapter, he concentrates on both the metallurgical and chemical industries and takes the Lenin Metallurgical Plant and the Borsod Chemical Combines as case studies.