Post-accession Compliance and Environmental Policy in Times of Populism: Watering Down EU Expectations or Simply Wasting the Momentum?

What makes European Union (EU) Member States decide to comply with the European legislation? Which domestic strategies enhance the sustainability of compliance? The article focuses on Hungary's implementation path in the environmental sector. An environmental frontrunner since the late 1990s, Hungary followed a gradual but steady approximation progress to the EU environmental legislation whose pace did not stop or backslide with EU Membership as EU monitoring reports revealed. Previous research established an important role of the participation of economic and societal stakeholders in the decision-making and implementation process based on EU environmental legislation in Hungary. This, at least, until 2010. With the victory of the Fidesz party in the parliamentary elections of 2010, the new government started to change the "rules of the game" by nationalizing infrastructures and weakening the participation and investments of foreign stakeholders. Comparing water and waste management sectors, the article analyzes the stages that brought Hungary to comply with the EU environmental legislation during the EU Accession process and, expanding the study to cover the recent years, it seeks to understand how the recent governments' changes impact the sustainability of the environmental compliance path in Hungary.