Recently, the management of the green financial sector has been widely influenced by global socio-economic concerns such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the energy crisis. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate, besides their environmental attitude, what opinions and experiences the affected stakeholders have about the sustainability-related processes in the Hungarian banking sector in the early 2020s. To assess this subject extensively, two questionnaire surveys were conducted in two consecutive years (2020/2021 and 2021/2022), involving 600 and 1,600 participants randomly chosen from banking databases, respectively. The results indicate that both residential and corporate participants have various but broadening knowledge of green financial instruments. Hungarian residential customers have pointed out the inconveniences of the most popular green loan product (Green Home Program), while there appears a distinct difference in green investment preferences between the two groups of respondents. Hungarian stakeholders are quite eco-conscious, and so are banks adopting sustainability and climate risk assessment actions, however, the implementations have much potential to exploit. Respondents also identify the energy crisis-related risks, while their trust in the banking system remains high even under volatile circumstances. These findings demonstrate that the Hungarian green banking sector has a high degree of crisis resistance with residential and corporate stakeholders behind giving trust and thereby the driving force toward the successful green transition.
A környezeti (E), szociális (S) és kormányzati (G) kritériumoknak való megfelelésről a vállalatoknak az ún. nem pénzügyi információkra vonatkozó közzétételek szabályrendszere (keretrendszer) szerint kell beszámolniuk. Tanulmányunkban azt vizsgáljuk, hogy milyen jellemzői vannak az ESG-jelentéseknek, azok tükrözik-e az egyes piaci szereplők fenntarthatósági tevékenységét, és melyek a kérdéskör legkurrensebb problémái. Kutatásaink során arra a megállapításra jutottunk, hogy számos egymással párhuzamosan létező – eltérő adatok közzétételét előíró – kötelező és önkéntes közzétételi előírás van, amelyek ezért csak részlegesen alkalmasak a vállalkozások fenntarthatósági tevékenységének az összehasonlítására. A vállalati jelentések egy része emellett csak alapelvi szinten foglalkozik az ESG-kérdésekkel, és csak kisebb hányaduk számol be konkrét intézkedésekről és elért eredményekről. Éppen ezért megfogalmaztuk azokat a javaslatokat is, amelyek a vállalatok ESG-mutatók alapján történő összemérhetőségét támogatják.
The criminal legislation regarding zoophilia and the legal status of animals were examined in 15 European countries. With regard to zoophilia, answers to the following questions were sought: are sexual acts performed with animals and the possession and distribution of animal pornography criminally punishable? Several aspects of the legal status of animals were examined including: (1) is the protection of individual animals included in the constitution, (2) do animals have a special status beyond mere objects, (3) can we find specific legislative provisions that explicitly state that animals are not simply things, and (4) does the legal system also take the “dignity” of animals into consideration. The assessment of zoophilia and the legal status of animals resulted in two country rankings, which the authors compared with each other. The correlation was not significant (p = 0.3147). At the same time, countries with differentiated criminal legislation for zoophilia were also 3.62 times more likely to rank higher in terms of the legal status of animals. The Swiss regulations are exceptional in both respects, while at the other end of the list, Italy does not have specific legislative provisions for either aspect.
Recently, the financial sector has also become increasingly sustainability-oriented. National central banks and national credit institutions are trying to follow the ever-expanding international regulatory framework and to develop new financial instruments to implement ESG requirements. Our research looked at the green finance portfolios of the ten major European banks by the total assets in 2021 to assess the market for green financial products. We have also examined the green instruments of the ten major domestic banks by balance sheet total, with the hypothesis that the green product market for domestic banks can learn a number of lessons from the green product portfolios of the major European banks.
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