EPR in Hungary: MOHU, OKIR & the REpont DRS

Hungary runs its packaging-compliance system through a single state concession, so selling into the country means registering in the OKIR environmental portal and paying extended producer responsibility fees to one operator rather than choosing between competing schemes. That operator is MOHU, the waste-management arm of the MOL group, appointed by the state in 2023 to collect, sort and recycle the country's waste and to bill producers for it. The practical test for an online store is short: if you place packaging or a covered product on the Hungarian market, you register, you report by material, and MOHU invoices you. Skip it and the consequences are commercial as much as legal - marketplaces can suspend your listings and the authority can hold up consignments, because a Hungarian obligation cannot be discharged with a German or French registration number.

Government Decree 80/2023: how Hungary handed the system to MOHU

Before 2023, Hungary financed packaging waste largely through an environmental product fee - the "green tax" - paid to the national tax authority. Government Decree 80/2023 rebuilt that arrangement. The decree entered into force on 1 April 2023, and the new extended producer responsibility fee regime became operative from 1 July 2023, transferring collection, sorting and recycling to MOHU (MOHU Hulladékgazdálkodási) as the sole national concession holder. In place of a menu of competing producer responsibility organisations, every obligated producer now finances the system through that one concession.

The older environmental product fee did not disappear entirely; it survives in law for categories left outside the concession. But for packaging and most streams, the MOHU fee is now the route. An obligated producer is any business that first places a covered product, or its packaging, on the Hungarian market, and the distance-selling rules pull foreign online sellers in from the first parcel shipped to a Hungarian buyer. There is no volume threshold and no financial de-minimis exemption: the requirement to register and report applies whether you ship ten orders a year or ten thousand.

Registering in OKIR and contracting with MOHU

Compliance runs on two separate steps, and getting either wrong stalls the other. First comes the register itself: your business is entered into OKIR, the National Environmental Information System, through the OKIR environmental portal, which issues your official producer identifiers. Foreign sellers cannot simply create an account with home-country credentials. You must first obtain a Hungarian tax number - which makes you visible to the tax authority without necessarily requiring a branch or subsidiary - and then appoint an authorised representative established in Hungary. That representative holds your portal access, manages correspondence with the environmental authority and assumes joint responsibility for the accuracy of what you file, a proxy arrangement that mirrors the distance-seller rules across Central Europe, including EPR in Poland.

The second step is a commercial contract with MOHU. OKIR is the regulatory database that records your compliance status; MOHU is the entity that actually invoices you for the waste-management service. Reporting is quarterly. At each quarter's close your representative isolates the exact weights of packaging or covered products you shipped to Hungarian customers and submits a material-by-material declaration through OKIR. MOHU then multiplies those weights by the statutory per-kilogram rates and issues an invoice you must settle to stay compliant. Because the rates differ sharply by material, mapping your catalogue to real packaging weights matters more here than guessing - the same discipline that decides whether EPR duties apply to you in the first place.

Which streams carry the concession fee

Packaging is the immediate obligation for e-commerce, covering the transit boxes, mailing bags, adhesive tape and void fill used to ship orders. You declare the net weight by material type - corrugated cardboard, paper, rigid and flexible plastic, glass, ferrous metals and aluminium - each quarter. Electricals fall under the Hungarian transposition of the WEEE Directive, enforced since 4 July 2012; sell a packaged electronic device and you report the device under WEEE and the box under packaging. Batteries sit under a national scheme with the EU Batteries Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 applying on top from 18 August 2025, with categories split by chemistry and format. Single-use plastics have been in scope since 3 July 2021, and end-of-life vehicles since 21 October 2000. Tyres run under a national scheme.

Two streams are narrower than the headline list suggests. Furniture is in scope only when it is wooden: dining tables, chairs, bed frames and cabinets trigger a duty, but furniture made entirely of plastic, glass or metal does not, though its protective transit packaging always does. Waste oils are regulated under a national scheme derived from the Waste Framework Directive and tracked in OKIR, but they have historically sat on the environmental product fee rather than the concession EPR fee - a carve-out worth confirming before you assume the MOHU route applies. Looking ahead, textile producer responsibility arrives under the EU textile EPR directive from 17 April 2028, and fishing-gear duties under Article 8 of the Single-Use Plastics Directive are flagged as upcoming without a firm domestic go-live date. Hungary currently operates no scheme for graphic paper, toys, DIY and garden equipment, sports and leisure goods, construction materials or recreational boats.

Collective or individual fulfilment

Collective fulfilment through MOHU is the default, and for a typical packaged-goods seller it is effectively the only realistic path. The system does permit individual fulfilment for a defined set of streams - electronics, industrial and automotive batteries, and motor vehicles - which is the main exception to the single-route model. That option matters chiefly to specialist producers of electrical equipment, industrial batteries or vehicles who can stand up their own compliant collection and recovery; a store shipping consumer parcels will file through MOHU.

Fees, the legacy green tax, and enforcement

Because the model is a state concession, you cannot negotiate competitive rates. MOHU sets and publishes the packaging fees by material, and you pay per kilogram against your declared weights, so cardboard transit boxes and protective plastic mailers are charged at different rates. Electronics and battery costs are billed separately and depend on the equipment category and battery chemistry. Foreign sellers should also budget the recurring cost of the mandatory authorised representative - a commercial retainer plus ongoing reporting fees - on top of the material charges. The interaction with the surviving environmental product fee is the one area to check with your representative, since the older fee still applies to categories left outside the concession.

Enforcement leans on the same points of leverage. The authority monitors the OKIR register, and digital marketplaces are legally obliged to suspend or delist offers where a seller cannot show proof of compliance, which makes registration a condition of continued selling rather than an optional filing.

The REpont deposit-return scheme

Hungary operates a national deposit-return scheme, REpont, which launched in January 2024. Like the wider waste system it is run by MOHU, but it functions separately from the EPR fee. REpont covers single-use plastic bottles, metal cans and glass beverage containers: consumers pay a small refundable deposit and reclaim it by returning empties to collection points. The interaction with packaging EPR is the detail sellers miss - containers inside the deposit scheme are exempt from the packaging EPR fee, so a drinks producer pays the deposit on those containers instead, while any other packaging it places on the market still carries the fee. If you ship these beverage formats into Hungary, you register them directly for REpont; your standard OKIR packaging registration does not clear the deposit liability.

Hungary's compliance milestones

The dates below are settled: the concession model is live, the deposit scheme is running, and the remaining entries are EU rules landing on top of the national framework. The next milestone is PPWR applying EU-wide in August 2026, followed by textile EPR in 2028.

Calculating material weights for MOHU and tracking OKIR's quarterly deadlines drains hours from an operations team. Automate your packaging data reporting to keep your Hungarian market access protected.

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Sources:

• OKIR environmental portal
• Government Decree 80/2023 (national legislation database)
• Textiles EPR Directive (EU) 2025/1892
• Single-Use Plastics Directive (EU) 2019/904