Foreigners flocking to Hungary: a safe haven for expats?

More and more foreigners are choosing Hungary as their home. Now, there are more than 220,000 expats living here, which is 2 percent of the country’s total population. Many of the foreigners moving to the country are elderly and retired, but there are also families with young children. They are not necessarily looking for a life in a big city, but are happy to move to villages and small towns. We also experienced a great influx of so-called guest workers in recent years.

Why are more Germans migrating to Hungary? – begins a video shared on TikTok by a man who moved to Hungary from Germany, Magyar Nemzet spotted.

The man posted on the social networking site under the name Die_schmidts_ungarn and put forward many arguments in favour of Hungary. In the video, he says that people in Hungary lead a more relaxed and laid-back lifestyle than in any other European country. He also stressed that Hungary has an “incredibly rich culture and history” and “Hungarians are unshakably proud of their country and there is a great sense of cooperation between them”.

Hungary has a low crime rate, and it is cheap for foreigners

Earlier, Balázs Orbán also shared a video on his Facebook page showing a short conversation between the prime minister’s political director and an Australian man who had moved to Hungary. The latter, in agreement with the man posting on TikTok, claimed that Hungary has a very low crime rate, and they both consider Hungary safe. The German ‘tiktoker’ also noted, among other things, that we have a lower cost of living than, for example, Germany or Austria, and that integration is relatively more accessible than in other countries.

Magyar Nemzet have quoted a piece of data from the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH), which also confirms that our country has become very popular among Germans: over the past four years, the number of Germans settling in Germany has grown dynamically by 34.9 percent. While 16,537 German citizens arrived in Hungary in 2019, the number of German citizens living in Hungary reached 22,310 in 2023, according to a recent analysis by the Hungarian-German Institute.

“The counties of Baranya, Tolna and around Lake Balaton are all parts of the country where you hear more and more German words, and not because of tourists. While the number of ethnic Germans in Hungary has long been significant, the German community, which has been growing in recent years, is also becoming more widespread in the last few years,” says Bence Bauer, director of the Hungarian-German Institute.

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Most foreigners settle in Budapest. They typically come to Hungary for work, but many move here through marriage. However, the country’s relative cheapness is also a key factor. According to the latest census made by KSH, there are 226,267 foreigners living permanently in Hungary. This number is 75,000 more than in 2011, and also worth mentioning that more people come from outside the EU (126,000) than from within the EU (92,000).