At a conference titled 'Ten Years of the Public Procurement Law', Csaba Balázs Rigó, president of the Hungarian Competition Authority (GVH), highlighted the agency's strong support in uncovering procurement cartels. He noted that the GVH examines over 1,500 tenders annually, which is remarkable on an international scale.

Rigó emphasized that the GVH's primary missions are to oversee market competition and actively protect consumers. The authority focuses on one of the biggest threats to lawful public procurement procedures: cartels. He stated that uncovering and dismantling procurement cartels is crucial for ensuring the competitive use of public funds.

In his presentation, Rigó detailed the GVH's active efforts against cartels, mentioning that fines imposed in cartel cases have approached 30 billion forints since 2017. In 2024 alone, fines exceeded 2.5 billion forints, with over 1,000 tenders related to public funds being investigated in 19 ongoing cartel cases last year.

He also discussed the possibility for companies cooperating with the competition authority to significantly reduce fines through leniency applications, which can help preserve jobs. Hungary is portrayed as a business-friendly environment where self-cleaning mechanisms exist, allowing cartel companies to prove their future reliability to avoid exclusion from public procurement.

Rigó pointed out that the Hungarian public procurement system, regulated by the ten-year-old law, is among the most transparent in Europe, ranking third according to the European Commission's scoreboard. He acknowledged improvements in reducing single-bid procurements but noted that further work is needed in this area.

In early 2023, the Hungarian government adopted an action plan aimed at increasing competition levels in public procurement, with a goal to significantly reduce the proportion of single-bid procurements. The GVH has been tasked with conducting sectoral investigations to uncover the reasons behind these single-bid cases.

The GVH has already completed a rapid sectoral investigation in December 2024 focusing on the medical equipment market, with further investigations planned for the automotive sector and mosquito control market in 2025.