In February 2021 the National Directorate-General for Aliens Policing published its latest statistical reports, which cover the year of 2019 and the first six months of 2020. The figures show that the steady increase in the number of immigrants in Hungary which has characterised the past five years has come to a halt, with just a 1% increase between December 2019 and June 2020.

There is a slight increase in the number of people staying in Hungary on a long-term residence permit, whereas both the number of short-term residents and the number of third country national family members of EU citizens have decreased. There were also fewer beneficiaries of international protection residing in Hungary in mid-2020 than in the previous year.

Closer examination of the flow data finds a significant decrease in the number of requests for a short-term residence permit. In 2019 there were more than 130 000 such requests submitted; in the first six months of 2020 there were only 37 000.

The biggest decrease can be seen in the number of requests for residence permits based on studying in Hungary, which dropped to one-third of its equivalent from the previous year: in the first half of 2020 there were just over 5 000 requests, while 2019 saw 30 000 across the year. There was a similar - though less dramatic - drop in the number of employment-based residence permit requests, with 78 000 submitted in 2019 and only 25 000 in the first six months of 2020. Proportionally, this equates to a 40% decrease.

It is very likely that the 2020 figures, although spanning only six months, already reflect the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing changes to immigration policy, as well as general economic recession.

The greatest impact shown by these statistics is the changes in the residence status of third country national students. For them, travel bans and the shift to online teaching made entry to and residence within the country extremely difficult. The pandemic’s impact on the labour market and the employment of third country nationals unfolded more slowly, but consistently. The change is already apparent from the first six months of data on this, and it is very likely that the trend continued or even accelerated in the second half of 2020.

Find more statistics here.