Six days and five million forint: employer duties after the job ends

In Hungarian law the employer's responsibility does not end with the notice period. Under Section 29 subsection (1) of Act XC of 2023 on the entry and stay of third country nationals, the employer has to ensure that the worker leaves the country within six days of the employment ending. Subsection (2) sets the penalty for failure at five million forint.

The six day departure obligation

The duty appears in three parallel places in the Act, matched to the employment title: Section 29 subsection (1), Section 27 subsection (1) and Section 32 subsection (1). The content is identical in all three. Six days run from the end of the employment, and the employer, not only the worker, answers for the departure.

The clock starts on the day the employment ends. Not on the day of final settlement, and not on the day the last wage is paid. That matters, because six days is shorter in practice than it sounds: it has to hold the flight booking, the clearing of the accommodation and the journey itself. Where notice takes effect on a Friday, the deadline falls in the middle of the following week.

The National Directorate General for Aliens Policing sees those six days through the employment record. The same employer reporting that showed the start of the employment shows its end, so the authority does not need to investigate to ask a question from day seven.

The fine and the cost of removal

The sanction has two parts and they stand alongside each other. Under Section 29 subsection (2), Section 27 subsection (2) and Section 32 subsection (2) of Act XC of 2023, failure to meet the departure obligation carries a fine of five million forint. Under Section 29 subsection (3), Section 27 subsection (3) and Section 32 subsection (3), the employer reimburses the cost of removal where the authority has to act.

That cost is not a flat rate. It covers the actual ticket, escort and detention costs, and it varies with the country of origin. A ticket from Budapest to Kathmandu bought at short notice sits an order of magnitude above a planned return, and the difference lands on the employer.

The 5 day report and the six days run together

Under Section 31 subsection (9), a change in the conditions of employment, and the end of the employment is one, has to be reported within 5 days. That deadline expires one day before the departure deadline, so the two obligations run in the same week and neither substitutes for the other. Filing the report does not discharge the duty to ensure departure, and the departure does not cure a missing report.

The typical failure runs like this. An employer ends the employment of a Nepali welder by mutual agreement, and the worker wants to stay another month while looking for a new employer. The employer treats that as the worker's own business. After the sixth day the obligation still sits with the employer, and the fine is five million forint even where the worker has filed a fresh application in the meantime. Until a new title is issued, the former employer's responsibility stands.

This becomes manageable only where the termination date is set together with the departure date. In practice that means the decision to end the employment already carries the return ticket and the day the accommodation is cleared, rather than treating both as follow up. Accommodation rules connect here, since the cleared hostel and the reported address belong in the same register.

For the failure modes earlier in the permit process, see work permit refusal failure modes, and for the wider duty set, the employer sponsorship compliance chain.

Read together, the six days and the five million forint say one thing: in Hungary the end of an employment is an immigration event as well as a labour law one. An employer that treats termination as payroll work meets a second authority on day seven.