The Position of Environmental Protection in Municipal Council Committees of Local Governments in Hungary

As a result of the increasing significance of environmental protection, which can be observed in the past decades, according to international trends, the leaders of Hungarian settlements have also begun to pay more attention to this area. An important role in the management of settlements is played by municipal councils elected by the population, whose decisions are prepared by various sectoral committees. Despite the fact that the scope of the committees’ work is often wider than can be deduced from their names, we think it stands to reason to examine to what extent environmental protection are present in the names of municipal council committees. In the light of the above, this paper emphasises the following questions with respect to Hungarian settlements with a population of at least 5,000: to what extent is environmental protection present in the committee structures of the municipal councils of local governments and which factors influence the presence of environmental protection in the committee structure of local governments? The findings of the present paper can be summarised in the following major statements: • Municipal councils of settlements consider the presence of environmental protection in the committee structure as important, but they primarily deal with this area in combination with other sectors. • Environmental protection is most frequently dealt with in the same committee with the areas of urban development. • The presence of environmental protection in the committee structure shows correlation with three factors, of which the strongest link can be found in case of the volume of traffic passing through the settlements.