Suchergebnisse

The study deals with employee participation in corporate and plant management, showing the historical course of the formation and development from the early twentieth century to the end of World War II. Following World War II, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) developed a system of 50-50% ownership and employee representation in both areas, which in the early 1970s was transformed into two-thirds ownership and one-third employee representation. Next, the study presents the structural nature of the current participatory institutional system, the electoral system, and the licensing system in a comparative manner.

This study is a natural continuation of the author's earlier book on privatization in Hungary, covering the developments between 1989 and 2009 on 1700 pages. As it is well-known, the right wing FIDESZ government, which came to power with a 2/3 supermajority in Parliament, has embarked upon a totally new economic policy as from mid-2010. Within this setting, illiberal constitutional changes and unortodox economic policies were implemented. Renationalization was a significant (but not the most important) building block of this. As we analysed the individual transactions, it turned out that actually many of them were initiated by the previous, Socialist led government. In other words, there are interesting elements of continuity here, especially in the energy sector. Another interesting finding is, that almost without exceptions, the renationalization deals were not implemented by force, the Hungarian state paid quite generously to the sellers. In the case of the largest deals, there is even reason to speak of sweetheart deals through which the Hungarian government tried to make favour to German and US businesses. So far, the renationalization affected more than 200 firms (including banks) for which some HUF 1600 bn (≈ 5bn €) state money was used. This figure, just as the sums involved in the individual transactions are somewhat misleading, if compared to the privatization revenues generated by previous governments prior to 2010. However, if all transactions – i.e. asset sales and asset purchases – are expressed as a percentage of Hungary's annual GDP, it becomes clear that the post 2010 nationalization deals were much smaller than the 1990-2000 privatization deals.

Before 1990, the reform-opposition criticizes the government that they want to stimulate the capital inflow instead of real reforms. The author in her earlier work published in January 1990 underlined, that there is no royal way which is without suffering. To control the inequilibrium in the economy one has to introduce real reforms of ownership, in public financ to create a more balanced budget and liberalize the role of prices. After the political changes one political wing urged the quick privatisation saying that the state is no good owner. Because there was no financing capacity at the housholds, saving was very limited, the quick privatisation led to a high foreign ownership int he enterprise sector. The country- as other Central European Countries (CEC-s) relied havily on foreign capital both FDI and lending. It was partly necessary, partly dangerous. Technical modernisation was important but the foreign – owned firms often repatriate their profit. Hungarian GDP difers from GNI strongly, compared to OECD countries. The over-reliance on foreign capital coases problems for both economy and society.