1. Government injects additional budget resources to deal with expected rush towards preferential naturalisation

The Hungarian Government has decided to commit an additional budget of almost € 300 000 to implement the amendment to the Hungarian citizenship law passed on 26 May 2010 (Act XLIV of 2010 amending Act LV of 1993 on Hungarian Nationality). According to the Government Resolution (No. 1162 of 4 August 2010), this additional budget shall be transferred immediately from the Treasury to the public administration in charge of naturalisations before the expected rush of ethnic Hungarians from adjacent states submitting applications for preferential naturalisation. In the following years all involved ministries (Ministry of the Interior, Foreign Affairs, Public Administration and Justice, and Defence) will plan into their regular yearly budget the costs of infrastructural, institutional and personnel development required by this citizenship reform. The short resolution proves that the Hungarian nation-building project in the near abroad is also considered a human resource for defence, and public financing for this accelerated naturalisation – its length may not exceed 3 months if all required documents are attached to the application – is available despite the economic recession and tight budgeting constraints. Furthermore, the task of implementation is assigned to the Ministry of the Interior and its Immigration and Nationality Office (OIN) instead of the Ministry of Public Administration and Justice (MPAJ). The latter has been made formally responsible for matters concerning nationality and civic registration (nationality, marital status, local registration) by Act XLII of 2010 passed on 20 May 2010 after national elections in spring. However, the OIN operating under the auspices of the Ministry of the Interior remains unchanged and it is deeply involved in the preferential naturalisation procedure, whereas the Minister of Public Administration and Justice is politically responsible for nationality law. While the new preferential cases will be administered in an accelerated way, the applicants of pending cases have been waiting for at least two years. According to the State Secretary of the MPAJ, the government promises that capacity building will support deciding the currently pending 2000 cases until the end of the year (as reported by MTI, the official Hungarian news agency, on 19 July 2010). At the same time, the Government appointed a special rapporteur on “dual citizenship issues” inside this Ministry. This rapporteur announced that the inter-ministerial working group coordinating the policy implementation projects about 400,000 applicants in 2011 (Népszabadság 6 August 2010) but the total amount in the following period may reach the numbers of persons currently holding an ethnic Hungarian certificate, who have been mostly recently counted as 923,000 (MTI 30 July 2010). The cost of processing applications is calculated as € 1.4 million within two budget years. This urgent financial injection covers the recruitment of additional 200 civil servants (today the total staff of the OIN and ministerial citizenship section is 70 civil servants).

2. Regulations for processing the preferential naturalisation of Hungarians abroad

The Government Decree No. 224 of 4 August 2010 has modified the executive rules for the implementation of the Act on Hungarian Nationality (previously laid out by Government Decree 125 of 22 September 1993). Certain procedural requirements for the acquisition and renunciation of nationality will be changed on 20 August 2010 (a national Hungarian holiday commemorating King Saint Stephen). This is the twelfth modification since 1993, the year when Hungarian Citizenship Act entered into force. There are several minor changes, such as the renaming of offices (e.g. Public Administration Office instead of Regional Governmental Office). The most relevant amendments in the processing of citizenship are the following ones:

a. Although the Citizenship Act provides for shared competences among the government agencies and ministries, the OIN under the auspices of the Ministry of the Interior remains the designated government agency that receives and administers all citizenship application files. These files shall be forwarded to the responsible Minister of Public Administration and Justice for approval who then passes them on to the President of Hungary for the formal decisions. Local civic registrars and consular officials will also be entitled to receive the completed applications and to forward them to the OIN.

b. When receiving applications for re-naturalisation or for accelerated naturalisation, the local civic registrars, the consular officials or the OIN officials shall check not only the identity of the applicant or certify his or her authentic signature but shall also certify “the Hungarian language knowledge of the applicant” [Section 2]. This means, first, that there will be no need for an official certification of the authenticity of the identity and signature by authorities of the state of residence and current citizenship – despite some bilateral agreements that would require this. Second, the required language knowledge will not be verified by substantive or formal standard procedures. It remains unclear how a consular official or a local registrar in each municipality will be able to test language competence and what the required level of knowledge will be. The only point specified in the vague instructions is that a CV in Hungarian shall be attached to the form completed by an applicant living outside of Hungary [Section 4(8)]. Will there be only a short conversation with the official? What would be the consequences if the form and CV is written by another person and the applicant can only make a signature?

c. Applicants for naturalisation and re-naturalisation shall give a declaration that they have a clean criminal record and are not under any criminal investigation of have been sentenced for an intentionally committed offence during the last five years. Naturally, the OIN shall verify the facts by referring to the registry of criminal offenders, the population register and the records of the aliens police. If the applicant lives abroad, however, he or she shall attach a certificate of a clean criminal record issued by the responsible authority of his or her country of residence upon request of the OIN [Section 3(2)]. This means that the Hungarian authority has no own information on the criminal record of applicants for accelerated naturalisation residing abroad and may not be able to obtain such data in the absence of a standardised certificate issued by the foreign authority. How will the Hungarian authority then evaluate the threat to national security, public order and a criminal record of the applicants, which are criteria for excluding them from accelerated naturalisation?

d. Non-Hungarian immigrants who can only apply for ordinary naturalisation and are excluded from the accelerated procedure will be discriminated against with regard to fees. The administrative fee for the exam on the Hungarian constitution will be raised from € 20 to € 129, which amounts to 50% of the monthly minimum wage. Other conditions for the citizenship test are not changed, including the difficult Hungarian language exam.

e. The form for the accelerated naturalisation is the same as for re-naturalisation [Appendix 10]. This supposedly reflects the homogeneity of the two groups, although the large majority of possible applicants for accelerated naturalisation have never been Hungarian citizen – only very old persons born before 1920 or those who lived in one of territories annexed during World War Two and then lost again in 1945. Applicants have to give details on how their citizenship was lost or terminated, on their family lineage, descent and changes in the citizenship status of their relatives (parent, grandparent, child, grandchild, brother/sister etc.) including who has acquired Hungarian citizenship within the last ten years. The applicant also has to sign the following declaration in the form: “I declare that I can understand and speak the Hungarian language”. Furthermore, the applicant living abroad is entitled to choose the place (embassy or municipality in Hungary) where she or he would take the citizenship oath. Finally, applicants may request the modification of their surnames and given names after accelerated naturalisation regardless of their place of residence. The applicant has to attach documents (e.g. proving the loss of Hungarian nationality, marital status, birth registration) to the application. Providing these documents may turn out to be the most frequent cause of delays in the accelerated procedure.

3. The future rights of naturalised Hungarians residing abroad

The special rapporteur on “dual citizenship issues” has announced that voting rights or social rights in Hungary will not be available for citizens naturalised by accelerated procedure residing abroad, because under current laws these rights require a residence registration in Hungary. However, it is well known that obtaining a residence registration is not too complicated in local registrar offices. Moreover, the rapporteur indicates that there is also a projected strong increase of applications for Hungarian passports, so administrative capacity needs to be further improved.

According to the legislative schedule, an amendment to the Act on the ethnic Hungarian certificate and benefits (the so-called Status Law, Act LXII of 2001) is planned for autumn. This amendment would preserve for current holders of this certificate all existing benefits they enjoy while residing abroad also after accelerated naturalisation (MTI 30 July 2010). However this amendment could re-ignite constitutional debates about equal treatment of all citizens.

Read more EUDO CITIZENSHIP News items about the amendment to the Hungarian citizenship law: reports on the Hungarian Citizienship Law reform and the reactions by neighbouring countries.

Read the EUDO CITIZENSHIP Forum debate about dual citizenship for transborder minorities.