Guest worker accommodation: the employer duty in Hungary

Housing is not the worker's private matter in Hungary. Section 26 of Act XC of 2023 on the entry and stay of third country nationals, known in practice as the Harmtv., places it on the employer. The address is evidenced in the application, and the National Directorate General for Aliens Policing can refuse the permit where accommodation is missing.

What Section 26 of the Harmtv. requires

Section 26 subsections (1) and (2) of Act XC of 2023 deal with employment for investment purposes. An employer stands in the favourable position where it provides accommodation at the place of work, separated from the local population. The statute does not simply ask whether the worker has somewhere to sleep. It asks whether the employer arranges it, and where.

Two consequences follow. First, accommodation is part of the application, not an arrival task. The address, the legal title of use and the capacity have to exist on the day of filing, because the accommodation details are evidenced in the application itself. Second, Section 26 makes the absence of accommodation a ground on which the permit can be refused. That is a substantive refusal, not a request to supplement the file, and it restarts the whole recruitment schedule.

The recurring mistake in Werklist files is a general letter of intent to rent, with no concrete address, because the employer wants to sign the workers' hostel only once headcount is final. For the aliens policing authority that reads as no accommodation at all, not as an arrangement in progress.

The 5 day report and the site inspection

The address is not a one time entry. Under Section 31 subsection (9) of Act XC of 2023, a change in the conditions of employment, and a change of accommodation is one, has to be reported within 5 days. The clock runs from the day the change happens, not from the day the payroll or HR system catches up with it.

This obligation fails in ordinary operations, where a move is a site decision. A project shifts a crew to another hostel, and nobody tells the immigration side, because the employment relationship itself did not change. The statute still counts accommodation among the conditions of employment, so a missed report is a breach. The practical fix is to keep the address in the same register that carries job title and pay changes, and to enter the moving date in the reporting calendar.

The address is also a subject of labour inspection. The inspector checks on site that the address given to the National Directorate General for Aliens Policing exists, holds the reported headcount, and is where the workers actually live. A gap between the file and the site is a finding in itself.

The table below shows what is examined at each stage.

The cost sits with the employer. Rent for the workers' hostel, utilities and transport between the site and the accommodation are costs of employment, not items to be passed freely to the worker. An employer that leaves housing out of the per head budget meets it in the middle of the project.

What to assemble before filing

The order in practice runs as follows. Accommodation first: a concrete address, the legal title of use, capacity, and separated housing under Section 26 where the case is employment for investment purposes. Then the application, carrying the evidence of that address. Then reporting discipline during employment, measured by the 5 day deadline.

The wider sponsor duties that sit behind this are set out in the employer sponsorship compliance chain, while right to work verification checks covers what an inspector asks to see on the day. For planning dates across corridors, compare work permit timelines by country.

Accommodation in Hungary joins the immigration file to daily operations. The same address appears in the application, in the report and in the inspector's record, and the three agree only where the employer treats housing as part of the employment.