Bence Retvari, a Hungarian parliamentary secretary at the Ministry of Interior, announced that the United States’ demand for the data of 900,000 Hungarian passport holders living abroad is unprecedented and unrealistic.
He assured that Hungary will not jeopardize the safety of its citizens.
Retvari stated, “Such a request to transfer data of hundreds of thousands of our citizens is unprecedented, and countries do not do that. Each nation protects and preserves its citizens’ data with legal guarantees, and Hungary follows the same approach. The data of this volume has not been transferred anywhere. This request is unrealistic, and other countries do not do it either.”
He pointed out that Hungary has always cooperated with the United States regarding specific requests in cases of Hungarian citizens violating the law.
However, it is not reasonable to assume the need for a list containing 900,000 people, as there might be one or two cases of granting citizenship unlawfully.
In such cases, it is necessary to investigate unlawful issues without causing potential problems for 900,000 individuals.
Retvari emphasized that Hungary and the United States have close mutual cooperation. Nonetheless, both countries’ governments have different political stances, with Hungary having a Christian and nationalist democratic government while the United States has a liberal left-wing government.
Earlier, the US Embassy in Budapest had announced a reduction in the validity of entry permits for Hungarian citizens from two years to one year.
The diplomatic mission cited the reason for this decision as nearly one million people obtaining Hungarian citizenship on a preferential basis without adequate security measures to verify their identities.
The Hungarian Interior Ministry described America’s decision as “revengeful” due to their refusal to provide citizens’ data.
