Nationwide inspection of battery industry-related plants announced in Hungary

A nationwide inspection program examining the entire operational chain of the battery industry in Hungary has been launched as of August 1, Minister of the Living Environment László Gajdos announced on Tuesday on his Facebook page.

Gajdos wrote that battery manufacturing can only operate in Hungary under stringent official oversight, transparent regulations and genuine accountability, thereby ensuring acceptance by society. The inspections will extend to the plants’ actual capacity, materials used, emissions, water consumption, and waste management, as well as to the facilities related to battery production, solvents, and the management of industrial waste, according to MTI.

According to the minister, the inspections will go beyond simply reviewing the submitted documents: the authorities will compare the data in the permits with the actual operations on-site and will inspect the entire process, covering everything from the route of the raw materials, through emissions, to waste management.

Where warranted, the authorities will collect samples and conduct laboratory tests; serious violations or hazards will result in immediate regulatory action.

According to Gajdos, the program’s goal is to identify and eliminate violations, as well as to tighten regulations, licensing practices, and official inspections. “I consider the health and safety of the Hungarian people and the protection of natural resources and the environment as my top priority,” the minister wrote in his post.

The Tisza government announced in early June that it was working on setting up an autonomous national environmental protection authority and that a nationwide inspection program would be launched at industrial facilities which pose the greatest environmental risk. It was also announced at that time that a nationwide plan for inspecting battery plants and other hazardous facilities would be finalized by the end of June, and that the regulation under which the locations of battery recycling plants could be designated by ministerial decision would be repealed. The goal is to ensure that, in the future, such investments are made based on uniform and transparent rules rather than on individual political decisions.

Along with the automotive industry, the previous, Fidesz-led government saw the battery industry as a potential pillar of Hungary’s economic growth. In line with this, over the past decade, it provided substantial government subsidies and offered an extraordinarily favourable regulatory and administrative environment for the sector. This attracted the world’s largest battery manufacturers to the country, and even the repeated protests of locals in the affected towns couldn’t prevent the construction of the multiple plants involved in battery production.

Zsolt Tárkányi, a representative of the Tisza Party in Parliament and the Parliamentary State Secretary of the Ministry of Transportation and Investment, previously said that a new authority—which will oversee the operations of battery factories and other key industrial facilities—could be established by September. According to the plans, in the event of serious violations, this authority will be authorised to impose fines amounting to billions of forints on the companies involved; furthermore, in extreme cases, it will be authorized to revoke all of their operating permits, which would effectively mean shutting them down.

The operation of a Chinese-owned battery plant in Debrecen was recently suspended due to serious environmental concerns. This spring, Telex reported on the previous government's cover-up of the serious occupational safety violations at the Samsung SDI factory in Göd. We previously also reported on the hidden hazards of waste handling in Hungary's battery boom.