This case focuses on the challenges of the public provision of high-quality water in Hungary, a high-income, former Eastern Bloc country that has been a member of the European Union since 2004. It struggles with chronic groundwater arsenic contamination.

At the Darden School of Business, this case is taught in the second-year elective, “Global Economics of Water,” in a public policy module that covers two topics: supplying water for the public and water markets. It is taught alongside “Deadly Wells in Bangladesh” (UVA-GEM-0158), to compare and contrast Hungary’s arsenic contamination issues and solutions to those of Bangladesh, a lower-middle-income country and one of the most populated in the world.