Are Hungarians afraid? Passport applications jumped this week – details
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Even though the war is in Ukraine, Hungarians seem to be quite afraid – or at least cautious – because these past few days, the number of passport applications highly increased.
Applications
Four times more people applied to renew their travel documents in Hungary after the outbreak of the war than in the previous months, according to Interior Ministry data sent to the Népszava news portal.
Several government offices in the capital have also seen an increase in traffic in recent days, with many people now wanting to renew their passports or extend their validity, Napi.hu was the first to report.
Details
Data from the Interior Ministry shows, as Népszava reported, that in 2019, before the COVID-19 outbreak, there were on average 1,500 to 2,000 passport applications per day. Later, this dropped to 1,200-1,500 during the epidemic. After a government decree was issued at the end of the year, stating that expired documents could only be used until the end of June, the number of daily applications rose to 2,200-2,300.
By comparison, on Monday, 28 February, which was the fifth day of the Russian-Ukrainian war, many more, almost 9,800 applications were submitted.
By Tuesday, this number fell to 7,200. The Interior Ministry underscored the fact that these figures alone are not sufficient to draw far-reaching conclusions, and that a longer period should be examined, Népszava said.