ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the case of illegally exported waste to the new EU member states, among which Hungary is chosen as a case study. Hazardous material is partly destined to countries, within the EU, which have already provided consent to the trade, and partly goes to non-EU, and non-OECD countries to which the shipment has been allowed. The chapter deals with the problem of illegal waste export to different Central Eastern European countries. Following different temporal and spatial trends, illegal waste export has become a major socio-economic problem in countries such as Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. The real dimension of the traffic is extremely high and continuously growing, as several media and environmental activists' reports point out. Concerning economic factors, the most obvious is the high attractiveness of the illegal versus the legal market of waste disposal.
