Zsuzsanna Lehoczki, a Hungarian economist who joined COWI in 1996 and went on to head the Budapest office, avoids making bombastic statements about the significance of the 20th anniversary of communism's fall.

But she believes that COWI's participation in technical assistance programmes during the early 1990s made a difference.

"Very good people came here, and they had a clear vision of where we should go and the tools we should use. The projects were important in changing attitudes, rules and legislation."

Environmental legislation under communism was actually stricter than in the West, for example. But the laws were impossible to enforce and were largely disregarded. To address the dismal environmental situation, COWI introduced cost-effective programmes.

"The thinking was that it is more important to have legislation that is not too stringent. It should be feasible yet credible," says Lehoczki.

Revolving doorShe says that while present-day Hungarians have taken steps to emerge from the shadow of communism, they have failed to make a crucial "mental change" and reject the system which encouraged people to be "creative" and find loopholes.

"There's a joke: if you have a Hungarian behind you in a revolving door, you can be sure he gets out in front of you," Lehoczki says. "We learned how to push and manoeuvre in that political system where there wasn't any possibility to have an impact on the rules."

Good exampleCOWI, she says, has played a small but significant role in changing the way business is done in the region.

"Personally, I joined COWI for my appreciation of the company and also the Nordic business culture and integrity. I think it's important to have values and demonstrate you can actually run a decent business by properly observing rules. In COWI and the Nordic culture you actually try and obey the rules, and if you don't like them, then you try and change them."

By Uzi Frank, uzif@cowi.com
Published: 09.11.2009