Hungary employment quota: how many third country workers you can hire
Under the Harmtv. the number of Hungarian employment permits is set each year by ministerial decree and published by sector in the Magyar Kozlony gazette.
Hungary sets no per company headcount allowance. Under sections 28(4) and 30(4) of Act XC of 2023 (the Harmtv.), the number of residence permits issued for employment may not exceed the annual permit number set by decree of the minister responsible for employment policy. The quota is national, and it runs out in the order applications arrive.
Who sets the quota, and where it is published
The quota belongs to the Ministry for National Economy, specifically to the minister responsible for employment policy. The decree is published in the Magyar Kozlony gazette, and the allowance is broken down by sector and by permit type. Two practical conclusions follow for an employer.
First, the quota is not negotiable. No file carries an application past an exhausted sector allowance, and no administrative discretion opens a place retroactively. The National Directorate General for Aliens Policing measures against the allowance, so applications filed after it is used up are refused even when the employment contract, the accommodation and the employer registration are complete.
Second, the sector breakdown means the relevant figure is not the national total but the allowance attached to the sector of the job. A construction hire and a hospitality hire in the same month do not face the same remaining allowance. An employer planning against the aggregate number is planning against the wrong data.
The decree is annual. That means reading a new text at the start of every calendar year rather than carrying last year's figure forward. The breakdown and the sector labels can change too, so last year's internal table has to be refilled each January from the current gazette text.
Why the start of the year decides the outcome
The allowance does not drain evenly. In the first weeks of the year large industrial employers file at the same time, because they read the same decree and reach the same conclusion. That pattern makes timing the single most important variable in the plan: an application started in March can succeed on the same file that fails in September.
The usual failure follows from it. The employer runs recruitment and document collection on its own internal schedule, typically two months before the summer peak. By the time foreign documents are legalised and translated, the sector allowance is nearly used up, and the application fails on the calendar rather than on its merits. The lesson is plain: check the quota before recruiting, not on the day of filing. The steps of the application chain are listed in the guest worker permit procedure, which shows the real lead time that has to sit in front of the quota.
| Element | What it governs | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Annual permit number | The ceiling on residence permits issued for employment | Harmtv. sections 28(4) and 30(4) |
| Sector and type breakdown | How much of the annual figure each sector receives | Ministerial decree, Magyar Kozlony |
| Effect of exhaustion | New applications are refused | Harmtv. together with the decree |
| Outside the quota | EU Blue Card and EEA nationals | Harmtv. and EU free movement |
What sits outside the quota
The quota does not apply to the EU Blue Card or to EEA nationals. An EEA national works under free movement, so no employment permit is issued and no allowance is consumed. The EU Blue Card is the EU title for highly qualified workers, and the quota does not limit it either. This is not a theoretical distinction: an engineering post and a semi skilled production post in the same company sit under two different constraint systems, and the engineering post does not have to join the January race.
The Hungarian Card is a separate question, because the list of eligible occupations is set by ministerial decree and that list is also worth checking every year. The two decrees are not the same text and they do not move together. The Hungarian Card conditions are the starting point for choosing a title, and for multi country planning the permit timelines by country sit side by side.
On cost, the exposure here is not the official fee but the lost cycle. An application refused on an exhausted allowance pushes the hire into the next calendar year, and in the meantime much of the file expires, the police clearance and the medical fitness certificate among it, so the second attempt pays for them again. That item is usually several times the administrative service fee.
The Hungarian quota is not a per company allocation. It is a national annual figure broken down by sector, set by decree and published in the Magyar Kozlony. An employer that reads the current text in January and plans backwards from it does not leave the filing date to chance.
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