Hungary to Reach Agreements with Other Countries on COVID-19 Immunity Certificates

Posted date: 15 May 2021

Hungary will seek to conclude a bilateral agreement with every country that is open to entering into such an agreement, the Head of the Prime Minister’s Office, Gergely Gulyás, has said regarding the mutual recognition of the COVID-19 travel certificates.

At the same time, Hungary’s government has authorized the country’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó to conclude bilateral agreements on the mutual recognition of such documents, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.

Yesterday, Hungary announced that all vaccinated persons from Serbia and Montenegro would be permitted to enter the country as Hungary reached a joint agreement to recognize immunity documents mutually

Under such agreement, persons who hold Hungary’s vaccine documents would enjoy the same benefits as an immunity certificate holder of the partner country; Gulyas pointed out stressing that Hungary, too, would recognize the partner country’s vaccine passports.

According to Gulyas, the Hungarian government is also seeking to amend the penal code in order to include immunity certificates and make their violation a serious offence.

“Service providers could also face serious consequences if they fail to ask customers to present their certificates, with fines from HUF 100,000 (EUR 280) to HUF 1 million and even imprisonment possibilities,” he added.

More than 785,960 persons have tested positive for the Coronavirus in Hungary, up to this point, while 28,173 persons have died, according to Worldometers’ figures.

The same source reveals that 538,965 have fully recovered while there are 218,829 active cases in this territory. Such figures pushed the country’s government to keep in place some preventive measures to stop the further spread of COVID-19 and its new strains.

In a bid to make the travelling process easier for all persons who have taken the vaccine against the Coronavirus disease, authorities in Hungary previously introduced the immunity certificates, following the example of some other European countries.

Such a decision was also confirmed by Hungary’s minister in charge of the Prime Minister’s Office.

Back then, Gulyás stressed that such documents would not have an expiry date as there is not enough information on how long immunity lasts after taking two doses of a vaccine.

In this regard, an EU official told SchengenVisaInfo.com in April 2020 that once vaccines start to roll out in European Union countries, travellers would be required to follow two key requirements in order to enter Schengen Zone countries; present a negative result of the COVID-19 and later get vaccinated against the virus.

Reference Link: https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/news/hungary-to-reach-agreements-with-other-countries-on-covid-19-immunity-certificates/

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GSP Admin