Agriculture 4.0 in Hungary : the challenges of 4th industrial revolution in Hungarian agriculture within the frameworks of the common agricultural policy

The impacts of the 4th industrial revolution, which is considered a “general purpose technology”, do not appear only in the manufacturing sector or in the increasingly ICTintensive services sector. Agriculture, which is using manufactured inputs in more and more automatized factories, and which relies highly on technology in its basic activities, has also been going through remarkable changes recently. Precision farming (1), optimized usage of scarce inputs (2) and so attaining a more economy and ecology-friendly (sustainable) farming system (3) are all potential positive outcomes of the technological development of Industry 4.0 taking place in agriculture. In connection with this topic, our main aim is to determine the position of Hungary in this field, and whether there are any obstacles in this process. Both in the theoretical and empirical research conducted, we focus on the agricultural workforce, whether it is ready to keep pace with developments or if Hungarian farmers may be facing difficulties. Finally, as an outlook we examine the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy and its future changes, if it is currently or close to handling this challenge

Winners or losers? : state measures in crisis management and the energy markets

Several studies have been made about the present global financial crisis that has affected real economy as well. We know the root causes and its consequences. However we found a sector that has not been examined comprehensively in inland studies on the ground of changing environment. It is worth examining the effects on energy sector on the basis of their stages and impacts. Among governmental responses we can find several that hit energy markets, like supertaxes, privatisation or the broadening of state ownership. National supports were introduced for the handling of the financial crisis within the energy sector. However we must add that energy market supports served rather development purposes and not company salvage like we have seen it in other sectors. Also competition rules remained almost as consistent as we experienced it before. Moreover, if recent EU level energy policy projects come true, energy sector can even realize profit from the crisis. Future of the European energy markets depends on the recognition and exploitation of the possibilities coming from new circumstances

Perfect planning or the lack of effective lobbying? : the analysis of participants of European gas market liberalization

The EU has great medium term goals according to the common energy market. Its aim is to create a competition based productive, competitive gas market with respect to environmental aspects as well. Our aim is to examine with all of our restrictions, what (may) happen on this special field of energy market, closer on the gas market, by all the changes made within the framework of EU directed liberalization. More precisely, the aim of this study is to find out whether it is possible to handle the EU as a unity and to create one energy policy for the 27 Member States? Using more than a dozen of indicators chosen mainly from OECD studies and national statistics of countries we would like to classify EU Member States into some possibly homogeneous groups. We try to find out, whether it is possible to make some homogeneous clusters, or there may be some Member States left, as outsiders, which do not produce the expected conditions for example in state control, public ownership, entry regulation, and so on? We try to answer on the question why the common energy policy is so sensitive topic, and why a common energy policy cannot really be created without its full perception by Member States? By the help of this research we would like to get closer to answering our basic question, which refers to that, whether it is possible to extract a real EU level competition by liberalization in a market that has so different characteristics among member countries