Hungarian passport in the TOP10 again
The ranking of the world’s most powerful passports has shifted, yet Hungary maintains its position in the prestigious top 10.
Citizens of Singapore, Spain, Italy, Japan, Germany and France can travel visa-free to a staggering 194 countries worldwide, marking the highest count in the 19-year history of the London-based Henley Passport Index.
Singapore and Japan are the leaders so far. However, Europe has now joined the top ten. Finland, Sweden and South Korea share the second spot with access to 193 destinations, closely followed by Austria, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands in third place.
In fourth place is the UK, which has slipped off the podium due to Brexit.
Hungary secures the seventh position on the list, with 188 destinations its citizens can enter visa-free. This aligns Hungary with Canada and the United States. Remarkably, the United Arab Emirates has moved up the most places on the list, incorporating 106 additional countries into its visa-free portfolio since 2014.
Christian H. Kaelin, the creator of the passport index, notes a two-decade trend towards increased travel freedom. However, the gap between the leading and trailing countries on the index has widened. The average number of visa-free destinations has nearly doubled from 2006 to 2024, reaching almost 111. Meanwhile, only 28 countries at the bottom of the ranking, exemplified by Afghanistan, permit visa-free visits, as reported by economx.hu.
Read also:
- Hungarian company to make biometric passports for Ghana
- Reason why US limits visa waiver for Hungarians: passport fraud, security threat
It would be good to explain that Top 10 does not refer to the number of countries but to the number of positions in this ranking, where 23 countries, of which 16 are fellow EU members, including CZ and PL, do better than Hungary. In fact, at EU level, Hungary is not faring that. As usual.
Feel free to swap your Hungarian one for a different one that suits your tastes, Mario.
@Mario – please do not focus on facts and data! Politician hyperbole is the food for the masses…
Fun fact: for travel to the US, the validity period offered to Hungarians under the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) is now one year instead of two years, and ESTA will now only allow single visits (not multiple entry). This due to our Politicians granting citizenship to about one million (!) people between 2011 and 2020 – mostly to people claiming Hungarian ancestry living in neighboring states – “without adequate security measures in place to verify their identities”.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-tightens-conditions-visa-waiver-program-hungary-2023-08-01/
In fact, we are the only country out of 36 in the ESTA system with this distinction. And I suspect we were spared worse because we are an EU Member country.