Rules on Hungarian immunity certificate have changed!

On Monday evening, the Hungarian government issued in a new decree some modifications regarding the immunity certificate. These changes involve both Hungarian and foreign citizens to a certain extent.

Based on the new decision announced in Magyar Közlöny, the most significant changes involve the vaccination of those Hungarian citizens who do not have social security (TAJ) number and those foreigners who have been living in the country for a long time already. The decree creates the legal base for the inoculation of these two groups. All documentation needed in order to make, deliver and receive the certificate is also involved, writes hvg.hu.

The process, naturally, is a bit easier for Hungarian citizens without a TAJ number. They do not need to comply with any conditions set up in several other laws. For instance, the duration of their stay in the country is not considered when receiving the jab.

On the other hand, foreigners’ case is a bit different. Only

those spending a long time in Hungary can be inoculated in the country. The residence permit is the document proving this fact.

In case the foreign citizen possesses neither a passport nor an identity card (in the case of British citizens), this residence permit and its number will be put into the passport number box on the immunity certificate. Thus,

the immunity certificate will only be valid together with the residence permit!

If a foreign citizen does not have a TAJ card, he will still be entitled to the immunity certificate, of course, as mentioned above. However, he will need a separate, so-called “technical code” to replace the TAJ number on the immunity certificate.

This code needs to be asked for personally and only personally at any given “Government Window”.

In theory, and based on the decree issued on Monday, these details should solve the problem that many foreigners faced regarding the vaccination process.

Many foreign citizens, who have already received their first shot of the vaccine, are still waiting for the immunity certificate to arrive.

The decree on the immunity certificate was also modified a bit, nevertheless, it is a pretty important detail. So far, the decree said that the “immunity certificate proves the fact that the person possessing it was inoculated by a vaccine against Covid-19, a vaccine that is approved and used by both the European Union and the Hungarian government.” Starting from May 13, this sentence will be modified and will say that

the immunity certificate proves the reception of the vaccine in the territory of Hungary.

No further information or clarification was included in the decree, so we do not know for sure whether it means that the Hungarian government will not accept immunity certificates given out by other countries as those people were not inoculated in Hungary. This goes against the news we reported last week about two bilateral agreements that Hungary already signed with two countries in order to accept each other’s immunity certificates.

Read alsoVaccine registration opens for foreign residents, ethnic kin in Hungary

Source: hvg.hu