More transparent and reliable: new rules for authentic public registers

Authentic public registers are state-maintained databases whose information enjoys absolute legal trust. These registers ensure that legal statuses and facts can be verified clearly and reliably by both citizens and economic actors. Under a declarative effect, the rights and facts recorded in a register are presumed to be true until proven otherwise. Certain registers have constitutive effect (such as the real estate and the company register), meaning that the entry itself establishes, modifies, or terminates the relevant rights and obligations. An act issued in 2024 provides a unified legal framework for the regulation of authenticity and authentic public registers. Its objectives include protecting the public interest and the rights of third parties, reinforcing the principle of authenticity, simplifying state administration, and enhancing Hungary’s legal competitiveness. The legislation mandated the review of registers, the removal of unnecessary data, and emphasised that authenticity can only be maintained for accurate data. Any incorrect information must be corrected by the competent authority, either on its own initiative or with the involvement of the relevant parties or other authorities.

To enhance the transparency of nearly 800 state registers, lawmakers aimed to eliminate parallel registers and ensure the precise identification of authentic public data, so that each piece of information is reliably recorded in only one register. A public consultation was also conducted in the middle of October 2025.

According to the amendments effective from 1 November 2025, only data that comply with statutory and implementing regulatory requirements and are certified for authenticity may be granted such status. Data that were previously considered authentic but do not meet the required criteria will lose their authenticity on 1 January 2027 and will be reclassified as informational registers. The amendments primarily focus on transportation, employment, healthcare, social and other administrative registers, while they do not affect the company register or the real estate register. Several previously authentic registers will lose their status, including those of social service providers, mining companies and their technical managers, liquidators, competition council decisions, certain aviation authority records, parts of water registry entries, court bailiffs and certain healthcare professionals. Although these data will remain accessible, they will no longer be officially authenticated and will serve only informational purposes.

At the same time, the law establishes authenticity for the most important registers for citizens and businesses that directly affect daily life and economic activities. These include, among others, information on driving schools, licenses and operations of transport and bus companies, qualifications and licenses of technical inspectors, official registers of tachograph cards, unemployment benefits and training programs, registers of physicians and specialists, data on high-value diagnostic equipment in hospitals and clinics, information on pharmacies and medical device retailers, and licenses and activities of gambling operators.

Through these registers, citizens and economic actors can quickly and officially verify the credentials of institutions, service providers and professionals, reducing bureaucracy and increasing legal certainty. The filtering of register data, elimination of parallel authentic public entries and comprehensive auditing make it transparent which registers the state maintains and which data they contain. As a result, the system of authentic public registers becomes simpler, more easily verifiable, and confers clear legal effect on state-maintained data. In the long term, these changes strengthen the reliability of state registers and the trust of citizens.