Hungary

Short stays are settled outside Hungarian law and the Act says so. Section 3 of Act XC of 2023 defines a short stay as 90 days in any 180-day period and states that Hungary permits it on the basis of the European Union's rules; section 11(1) sends entry to the Schengen Borders Code and stops there. What the implementing decree adds is a police check against that Code and nothing else - no fixed amount per day of the kind Slovakia writes into Decree No 499/2011 Z. z. at 56 EUR, and no national subsistence figure anywhere in the short-stay part. The one thing Hungary does add is unusual in the other direction: section 13(1) says that a third-country national holding a short-stay visa, and a national of an Annex II country lawfully present, may work. Section 13(2) immediately narrows it by preserving every other requirement, a work permit among them, so the sentence is a statement about immigration status rather than a labour-market permission - but most countries write the opposite presumption and Hungary did not. A third-country national must report their accommodation to the immigration authority under section 147(1); where the stay is in commercial accommodation the provider records the data at check-in under the Tourism Act, and otherwise the traveller files it themselves through the electronic portal.

Hungary has no residence permit for a person of independent means. Section 6(1) of Act XC of 2023 lists twenty-four purposes for a long stay and the closest thing to passive income among them is the White Card, which is not a passive-income route at all: section 62(1) requires a proven employment relationship with an employer outside Hungary, or a shareholding in a demonstrably profitable undertaking outside Hungary, worked through advanced digital technology from Hungary. Section 62(2)(c) then forbids working in Hungary or holding a share in a Hungarian undertaking, so dividends from a Hungarian company, Hungarian rent and a Hungarian pension are all outside it. The money test is the only hard figure in the long-stay part of the implementing decree: section 52(4) of Government Decree No 35/2024. (II. 29.) treats livelihood as proved where lawful income reached 3,000 EUR net in each of the six months before the application and continues to do so every month of the stay. What the holder gets for it is two years at most - one year, extendable once by one more under section 62(4) - and three closed doors: section 71(4)(f) bars the family unity permit, section 62(7) bars the national residence card, and section 84(3)(b) excludes White Card time from the three years that would otherwise earn one. Section 62(5) adds that no other residence permit may be applied for inside Hungary during the card or after it expires.

Section 6(1) of Act XC of 2023 is a closed list of twenty-four purposes for which a third-country national may stay in Hungary for longer than ninety days, and retirement is not one of them. Nothing in the Act reads on a pension, an annuity or a person who has stopped working. The two things a retirement route normally asks for are in the Act, but as general conditions rather than as a purpose: section 17(1)(f) requires means covering accommodation, living costs and the journey out for the whole stay, and section 17(1)(g) requires full health cover or the ability to meet the cost. Both attach to a purpose someone else has established, so having money and insurance qualifies nobody for anything. The nearest route in substance is the White Card, and it is closed to a retired person twice over: section 62(1) requires an employment relationship or a worked business abroad, and section 62(2)(c) forbids any Hungarian work or shareholding. The one way in that does not need a purpose at all is section 17(2), which allows entry and residence exceptionally, in the national interest, through the residence permit issued in the national interest - a ministerial decision rather than an entitlement, and section 85(2) says what the minister may weigh: Hungary's economic, nation-policy, scientific, cultural and sporting interest.

The 2023 Act renamed the ordinary foreign worker a vendegmunkas, a guest worker, and the word is doing legal work rather than rhetorical. Two permits carry it. The residence permit for employment under section 28 is the general one: two years, extendable once by one year, and section 28(6) forbids extension past three years from first issue. The guest worker residence permit under section 30 has the same arithmetic and a narrower gate - the employer must be a registered preferential employer or qualified temporary-work agency, the applicant must be a national of a third country named in a government decree, and the occupation must not be one the minister has excluded in a communication. Both are capped collectively by a permit number the minister for employment policy fixes each year. What happens at the end of the job is the part nothing else in this corpus matches. Section 33(1) makes the employment relationship with the named employer the legal basis of the stay; section 33(2) provides that where it ends, no individual immigration procedure takes place at all and the permit becomes invalid on the sixth day after the employer reports it; and section 33(3) requires the applicant, at the time of applying, to sign an undertaking to leave the territory of the Union and the other Schengen states voluntarily within eight days of that invalidity, naming the country they will go to. Section 29(1) puts the duty to see them out on the employer, and section 29(2) fines an employer who fails 5,000,000 forint. Guest workers cannot bring family (section 71(4)), cannot obtain a national residence card (sections 28(10) and 31(6)), and cannot apply inside Hungary for a permit on any other ground either during the permit or after it expires.

Hungary's guest investor programme runs on two documents. The vendegbefektetoi vizum under section 16 of Act XC of 2023 buys time to arrange the investment; the vendegbefektetoi tartozkodasi engedely under section 22 is the residence permit, and at ten years renewable by ten it is the longest first grant in the Act by a factor of five. What has changed is what counts as the investment. As the Act was promulgated in Magyar Kozlony on 21 December 2023 its section 16(3) offered three things: units of at least 250,000 EUR in a real-estate fund registered by the Magyar Nemzeti Bank, acquisition of an ownership share of at least 500,000 EUR in unencumbered residential property physically in Hungary, and a donation of at least 1,000,000 EUR to a higher education institution maintained by a public-interest asset management foundation. Section 135(2) of Act LXXXIV of 2024 replaced that paragraph, and the text in force carries only the fund units and the donation. The same section cut the visa from at most two years to six months. The residential property option survives in exactly one place: section 22(13)(b) still allows an existing holder to renew where their permit was based on it. The fund route has conditions of its own that no summary carries - section 22(9) requires the units to be subscribed directly and held continuously for at least five years, in a fund with at least 40 per cent of its net asset value in Hungarian residential property, whose manager appears on the register of qualified market participants kept under the defence and security procurement Act.

Study is one of the twenty-four purposes in section 6(1) of Act XC of 2023 and section 54 sets it out. The applicant needs a registered Hungarian school or an accredited higher education institution in full-time education, proof of language ability sufficient for the studies, the institution's fees paid, and a real Hungarian address reported as their accommodation - section 54(1)(e) asks for an actual registered address rather than a letter from a landlord. The permit runs between one and three years, or the length of a course shorter than a year, and is extendable in the same bands. Work is allowed and bounded: section 54(8) gives thirty hours a week during term and ninety days a year at full time outside it, which is more generous than the twenty hours common in the Union. What the permit does not do is accumulate. Section 54(7) bars the national residence card, section 71(4)(g) bars the family permit, and section 83(5)(f) repeats the settlement bar from the other side. After graduation section 55 offers a job-seeking or business-start permit of at most nine months which section 55(3) states cannot be extended, and which requires the job or the business to fit the level of the studies completed.

Hungary answers the descent question twice, in two different statutes, and neither answer is a residence permit. Section 6(1) of Act XC of 2023 lists twenty-four purposes for a long stay and descent is not among them, so a person with a Hungarian grandparent arrives on the same footing as anyone else and has to find a purpose. Once they hold a residence permit, section 83(1)(d) opens the national residence card - settled status, indefinite by section 74(2) - to a third-country national who was a Hungarian citizen, or whose ascendant is or was a Hungarian citizen, with none of the three years of continuous residence that section 83(1)(a) asks of everybody else. Two conditions survive: section 83(2) requires the stay to be consistent with Hungary's interests and the applicant to meet the social coexistence conditions, which in practice means the Hungarian cultural knowledge examination. The second answer is larger and skips residence entirely. Section 4(3) of Act LV of 1993 allows preferential naturalisation of a non-Hungarian citizen whose ascendant was a Hungarian citizen, or who makes their Hungarian origin plausible, and who proves their knowledge of Hungarian - subject only to a clean record and no security objection. There is no residence requirement, no livelihood test and no constitutional examination, and the Act sets no language level: under section 2(1) of Government Decree No 125/1993. (IX. 22.) the official taking the application checks the Hungarian and certifies by signature that they did so.

Marriage reaches Hungarian residence through the family unity permit in section 71 of Act XC of 2023. The spouse of a Hungarian citizen is covered by section 71(1)(e) read with section 71(2)(a), and section 73(1)(c) gives that permit up to five years at a time, extendable by five - the longest family term in the Act apart from the guest investor's ten. The spouse of a third-country national with a residence permit is in the same section but on a shorter clock, three years at a time under section 73(1)(a), and only where the sponsor is not one of the nine kinds section 71(4) shuts out: a guest worker, a White Card holder, a student, a trainee, a volunteer, or a guest self-employed person in their first year. Section 73(2) caps the family permit at the sponsor's own permit, so a spouse never outlasts the person they joined. Settled status is a separate clock again. Section 83(1)(c) opens the national residence card to the spouse of a Hungarian citizen, of a settled third-country national or of a recognised refugee where the marriage was concluded at least two years before the application - no residence requirement, but still the national-interest condition and the cultural knowledge examination of section 83(2). Section 72(1)(a) gives the family member an independent right to stay five years after the permit was first issued, and section 72(1)(b) preserves it if the sponsor dies and the conditions of the stay are met. Section 71(9) refuses a permit to the spouse of a sponsor whose other spouse already holds one.

A Union, EEA or Swiss citizen is not a third-country national in Hungarian law and is not in the 2023 Act at all: section 1(2) of Act XC of 2023 puts them under Act I of 2007, which survives the reform untouched. Ninety days in any 180 need only a valid travel document or identity card, and section 3(1) of Act I of 2007 accepts an expired one where a treaty allows. Beyond ninety days section 6(1) gives the Directive's three grounds - gainful activity, sufficient resources with health cover, or admission to a school or higher education institution with the same resources and cover - and makes the resources test a comparative one rather than an amount: enough that the stay does not become an unreasonable burden on Hungary's social assistance system. The registration duty is where Hungary differs from its neighbours. Section 21(1) requires the stay to be reported at the latest on the ninety-third day counted from entry - a day fixed from arrival, where Slovakia gives ten working days from entry and Croatia eight days from the end of the third month - and section 21(2) has the authority issue the registration certificate immediately on proof. A third-country family member has the same ninety-third day under section 22(1), but applies for a residence card rather than registering, and gets a three-month certificate on the spot while the application runs. Permanent residence comes at five continuous years under section 16(1), and section 17(2)(a) allows absences of up to six months a year without breaking it.

Ordinary naturalisation under section 4(1) of Act LV of 1993 asks for eight continuous years of residence in Hungary, a clean Hungarian record with no prosecution pending, secured livelihood and housing, no public or national security objection, and a passed examination in constitutional basic knowledge taken in Hungarian. Section 4/A(2) exempts from that examination a person of limited capacity, a graduate of a Hungarian-language institution, anyone aged sixty or over at the application, and anyone medically unable to sit it. Underneath sit a set of preferential routes that cut the eight years to three for a spouse of three years' standing, a parent of a Hungarian minor, an adoptee, a refugee or a stateless person, and to five for a person born here or resident since childhood. Two routes drop the residence requirement entirely: section 4(3) for a descendant or a person who makes their Hungarian origin plausible, and section 4(3a) for a spouse of ten years, or of five with a child in common. Both ask only for a clean record, no security objection and proof of Hungarian, and neither asks for the constitutional examination. Nothing in section 4 requires renouncing another citizenship and section 2(2) says a Hungarian who is simultaneously a citizen of another state is to be treated as Hungarian for the purposes of Hungarian law. What has changed is at the other end. Sections 9/A to 9/E now allow the designated minister, acting only of their own motion, to suspend for up to ten years the Hungarian citizenship of a dual national whose other citizenship is not that of an EEA state or an EU candidate state, where their conduct endangers public order, public security or national security and the suspension is proportionate. The Kuria reviews it in a five-judge panel within thirty days and may not vary the decision.

Section 3 point 2 of Act CXVII of 1995 defines a resident individual in four limbs and only one of them counts days. A Hungarian citizen is resident by nationality, unless they are simultaneously a citizen of another state and have no registered Hungarian home or place of stay. An EEA citizen is resident where they exercise the right of free movement and residence beyond three months in Hungary for at least 183 days of the calendar year, counting the days of arrival and departure as whole days - this is the 183-day rule, and it applies to nobody else. A third-country national holding long-term residence entitlement under the 2023 Act, and a stateless person, are resident with no day count at all; point 3 carves out only the minor child under section 83(1)(e) who spends fewer than 183 days in any twelve months. Everybody else - which means every third-country national on an ordinary residence permit, however long they stay - falls to the fourth limb, a sequence that asks whether their only permanent home is in Hungary, then where their centre of vital interests is, then where their habitual abode is. The Act defines both terms in the same sentence: the centre of vital interests is the state to which the closest personal, family and economic ties bind the individual, and a permanent home is one where the individual has settled for lasting occupation and actually lives, and it does not change because they stay abroad for a longer period on a temporary basis.

Hungarian social security is built on the word belfoldi, and section 4 point 1 of Act CXXII of 2019 defines it as a Hungarian citizen with a registered Hungarian home, a person with long-term residence entitlement, a recognised refugee or beneficiary of subsidiary protection, an EEA citizen exercising free movement beyond three months who has a registered Hungarian home, and a stateless person. A third-country national holding an ordinary residence permit is not on that list. The consequence runs through the whole topic: section 43(1)(a) makes the health service contribution payable by a belfoldi person who is not insured and is not otherwise entitled, so a person outside the definition cannot pay it and therefore cannot buy entitlement that way. They are covered by employment if they work, and otherwise by the private insurance that section 17(1)(g) of Act XC of 2023 requires them to have as a condition of the residence permit in the first place. For those who are inside the definition there is still a wait: section 43(2) requires a continuous year of registered Hungarian residence before the contribution obligation can arise, with up to ninety days of that year allowed to be address-less. The amount itself is a trap for a reader. Section 25(3) of Act CXXII of 2019 prints 7,710 forints a month and 257 forints a day, and the same paragraph provides that from the year after 2020 the monthly rate is the previous year's rate revalorised by the consumer price index for July, rounded to 100 forints, and published by the National Tax and Customs Administration on its website by 31 October of the preceding year. The figure in the statute is the 2020 figure and has not been the figure in force for years.

Hungary transposed the Union's basic account right by Government Decree No 262/2016. (VIII. 31.), and the decree is unusually explicit about who it reaches. Section 2(1) defines a person entitled to stay in an EEA state as a natural person who may lawfully stay in Hungary under a Union act or the law of an EEA state, expressly including persons with no permanent address and applicants for asylum under the 1951 Convention; section 6(1) then extends the right to initiate the contract to a consumer who holds no residence permit but whose expulsion is impossible for legal or practical reasons. The one real condition is exclusivity: the applicant must not already hold a forint payment account with another provider in Hungary and must declare so in writing, and section 6(2) stops a bank refusing on that ground where the consumer declares the other contract has been terminated. The credit institution has ten working days to accept or refuse and must give reasons in writing, free of charge, unless legislation forbids it. The price is capped rather than fixed: section 4(1) caps the monthly fees at 0.5 per cent of the smallest monthly gross minimum wage in force on the last day of the preceding year, provided the holder stays within two ATM withdrawals totalling 300,000 forints or one branch withdrawal of 50,000, and four transfers totalling 100,000. The account carries no credit line, has one holder, and its card may not be externally distinguishable from any other card the bank issues.

Section 17(4) of Government Decree No 326/2011. (XII. 28.) gives a foreign licence one year from the start of the stay in Hungary, after which it must be exchanged on application for a Hungarian one. The exchange is called honositas, naturalisation of the licence, and section 10 point 11 defines it as issuing a Hungarian licence in place of one issued by a third-country authority. What it costs depends on a treaty. Section 18(2) provides that a licence meeting the conditions may be naturalised, or exchanged where it was issued in another EEA state, with no examination obligation at all - and section 17(2)(a) fixes which licences those are: ones issued by a country that acceded to the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic of 1968 or the Geneva Convention of 1949. A licence from a country outside both conventions goes through a theory test in traffic basics, without a course, under section 18(3), where a certified translation can be mapped to a Hungarian category; and through a practical test as well under section 18(3a) where it cannot. There are formal requirements that catch licences no treaty problem would: section 17(1) requires the document to carry the holder's photograph and signature, the issue and expiry dates, the number, the issuing authority, and the words driving licence in the issuing country's language together with the country's name or distinguishing sign - and requires the fields and entries to be in Latin letters or repeated in them. EEA licences are outside the exchange duty altogether while valid, under section 17(5), except that a holder of an EEA licence with no expiry date who moves their habitual residence to Hungary must initiate an exchange two years after establishing it.

Hungary sets no rules of its own here. Council Regulation (EC) No 1186/2009 applies directly in every member state and governs relief for the personal property of a natural person transferring their normal place of residence from a third country into the customs territory of the Union. Article 3 grants the relief subject to articles 4 to 11. Article 4 limits it to property that, except in special cases justified by the circumstances, has been in the person's possession and, for non-consumable goods, used by them at their former normal residence for at least six months before they ceased to have their normal residence in the country of departure, and which is intended for the same use at the new residence; the same article lets member states require that the property bore the customs or fiscal charges normally due in the country of origin or departure. Article 5(1) requires the person's normal residence to have been outside the Union continuously for at least twelve months, with a discretion in article 5(2) where the clear intention was to reside outside for that long. Article 6 excludes four things and only four: alcoholic products, tobacco and tobacco products, commercial means of transport, and articles for use in a trade or profession other than portable instruments of the applied or liberal arts. Article 7(1) requires the goods to be entered for free circulation within twelve months of the person establishing their normal residence in the Union, except in special cases, and article 7(2) allows the goods to arrive in several consignments inside that period.