1-2 March 2004, Danubius Hotel Gellert, Budapest, Hungary

Keywords Conferences, Electronics industry

On the first Monday and Tuesday in March, the beautiful city of Budapest hosted the Green Electronics Conference. Held at the Danubius Hotel Gellert, the conference marked the 10 year of the European CARE Electronics programme and was attended by over 160 people from a total of 30 countries.

The conference was opened by Mr Bela Mohacs, the Hungarian Deputy Minister of ICT and he gave a speech that highlighted how new technologies have added a richness to our culture, as well us making us all more efficient and productive. He also highlighted how, despite all this technology, we were all working much harder and longer. As Hungary prepared for its forthcoming entry into the European Union, Mr Mohacs said his personal mission was to increase ICT penetration in Hungary and to fight what he called the digital divide, so that his country could move towards having a knowledge based economy. There was a new legal framework being implemented to help achieve this aim and there were programmes to help people obtain PCs and to have access to the internet. Hungary had achieved a 41 percent increase in domestic internet access in the last year.

Following this opening speech the rest of the morning session was dedicated to a series of presentations detailing the status and plans for the implementation of the WEEE and RoHS directives in Poland, Hungary, the Baltic States and Slovenia. These...