Getting things clear – questions concerning Hungary’s new rule on social security
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Recently, the Hungarian government passed a new law in which about 80,000 Hungarians who have arrears in national insurance contributions lost their access to Hungary’s public health-care services. The new law caused some serious confusion, so here is a couple of examples and a bit more clarification on the matter.
From the 12th of February, the social security identification number (TAJ) of those who accumulate six months of unpaid contributions will be blocked, and they will lose their access to Hungary’s public health-care services. This affects many Hungarians living or working abroad. Naturally, they will be treated, but the cost of the treatment and any tests involved would have to be paid. Hvg tried to search for whom it concerns, what it involves and how the debt can be paid off.
On Monday, Viktor Orbán answered some of these questions and has talked about some interesting data concerning the people this new law affects.
Half of the approximately 80,000 indebted are not present in the Hungarian labour market,
and 13% of them have no labour activities of any kind. The Prime Minister also highlighted that 7% of the affected people live in difficult social situations and that those people can expect special procedures to help mitigate the debt, reschedule the payment or to receive financial help concerning future national insurance contributions.
What could go wrong?
In 2009, Márton travelled to a non-EU country and checked out from the Hungarian national insurance. He somehow got inactive in the system until he travelled to London, the then EU member UK’s capital, where he acquired social security. After a month, he travelled back to Hungary, where they informed him of his HUF 500,000 (€ 1,400) debt of national insurance contributions. He presented a copy of his social security registration of the non-EU country he lived in, to the Hungarian National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV). His debt was cancelled.
Iván has been studying in the UK since 2018, where his university immediately registered him to the UK’s public health-care services. Even though he has not visited the UK for over a year now, as his studentship is still active, he is registered there. According to a law, a person cannot be registered in two public health-care services within the EU, so he would have had to cancel the one in Hungary beforehand. As he did not know about this, his arrear has been accumulating. He had to visit several offices multiple times, and, in the end, his social security identification number (TAJ) was cancelled in Hungary retroactively. He is currently in a situation where he needs to pay for his treatment, but the UK’s social healthcare system would pay it off to him. He first needs to deactivate his foreign social security before he could reactivate the Hungarian one. Still, it cannot be done until the middle of 2021 until his studentship would become null.
The situation that you have reported regarding Iván is INCORRECT in one important regard. Even if one has a UK National Insurance Number (NI) and possibly an allied and valid EHIC Card for foreign travel ie a holiday within the EU (they are still valid post Brexit until the card expiry date), unless one is a resident of the UK, they cannot be used for medical treatment in other countries. The EHIC card if still within date, only provides cover for emergency treatment, nothing else. Since Iván is not resident in the UK, he is not entitled to use his NI or EHIC in Hungary or anywhere else. To do so would be illegal.