Just as the outbreak of war caught the Hungarian government by surprise, neither the decision-makers nor the asylum system were prepared for a refugee crisis either. In the first few weeks, a vast amount of people arrived from Ukraine, yet nobody on the Hungarian side knew anything about the distribution of relevant tasks. The aid organizations interviewed for this article, that have very different backgrounds and structures, labeled the situation to be pure chaos. But the experience of the first few weeks also showed that everything can be done without state involvement, although the lack of central control and information slowed down the response to the problems of the refugees.
The state only started coordinating aid organizations several months later. By then, a large part of the activities of these organizations were already ignored, and this attitude has not changed over the past two years either.
Right after the outbreak of the war, Hungarian society became quite active, which helped and hindered the work of refugee organizations at the same time. On the one hand, the amount of social aid was huge, thus donations became abundant. On the other hand, chaos escalated because everyone wanted to help in their own way and of central coordination was lacking. During this time, the priority had to be educating those who wanted to help about what real help was.
In the summer of 2022, roughly six months after the outbreak of the war, those who coordinated volunteers began to sense a change of attitude. It is unknown how much this change was fueled by the outcome of the 2022 Hungarian parliamentary elections and the government's sharpening anti-Ukrainian narrative (it is important to stress that this was never directed at those fleeing the war). An important factor in the decline in donations was the fact that the rising inflation and utility prices changed the economic opportunities of those wanting to help. International organizations began to feel this change a little later, in the autumn of 2022, and although there is always a boost in donations around Christmas, the decline in offerings has become a general tendency. As is the case with any crisis, society's attention jumped right on to the next issue.
At the beginning of the war, the government’s rhetoric "we do not let anyone enter Hungary" that was dominant since the 2015 migration crisis, fired back. As a result of this policy, refugees from Ukraine were received by a completely worn-down asylum system.
Since 2015, mainly because of the refugees arriving from the southern borders, it has been administratively impossible to apply for refugee status on Hungarian territory. Although this was immediately abolished by government decree when the war broke out, it had already made many areas in the whole asylum system redundant and eroded. When a larger mass of Ukrainian refugees arrived immediately after the outbreak of the war, the resources were scarce: there were no experts with necessary knowledge, experience or language skills, there were not enough shelters, and the refugee IT system was not designed to cope with such a heavy workload.
The state initially managed the refugees through the BOK hall, run by the crisis management services and the government offices, and then, through the amendment of Government Decree 2022/104, it transferred the responsibility of providing accommodation to the municipalities. By entrusting the handling of Ukrainian refugees to the regional protection committees, the government has essentially shirked responsibility. These measures guaranteed that Ukrainian refugees would be resettled throughout the whole country, depending on local capacity, although most of them continued to live in Budapest. Nowadays, the state's involvement is manifested through the Charity Council, which provides an opportunity to communicate with the organizations it selects/accepts. The Charity Council was created in 2000 for a completely different reason: it was originally set up to handle and distribute for charitable purposes the confiscated customs goods and the assets of citizens who died without heirs. Humanitarian activities were only added later to the tasks of the Council.
In August 2023, the conditions to access different forms of support (e.g. for sustenance) were tightened, and the amount of certain types of support (e.g. for accommodation) was reduced. According to the stakeholders interviewed, the aim of the tightening was understandable, but the way it was implemented was questionable.
There seems to be no centrally organized system for the long-term care and integration of people arriving from Ukraine, and no strategy for this from the part of the government. The state sees the whole issue more as a logistical operation, aimed at either getting people through the country as quickly as possible or getting those who do stay to work as soon as possible. The latter is a perfectly understandable expectation from the perspective of any government, but the problem is that some of those fleeing the war are unable to be employed even if they are of working age. The domestic system does not favour exceptions either. Strictly speaking, the state performs the obligatory minimum: there is support for accommodation, education and sustenance. According to a senior staff member of an international organization working with refugees, who asked to remain anonymous, "the government is doing the minimum to keep the people who arrived alive, but they do nothing to make them comfortable". It tells a lot about the government's attitude that the government commissioner for the portfolio, Norbert Pál was appointed in May 2023, more than a year after the outbreak of the war. He had no relevant professional experience, but had been chief of staff to the secretary of state before his appointment. Although, according to our source from government circles, today, no one in Hungary knows as much about Ukrainian refugees as Pál does, the opinion of organizations outside the state sector is more nuanced, to put it mildly.
Ultimately, the government is only cooperating with a few of the organizations working with refugees. The NGOs and voluntary organizations are mostly treated as invisible, despite the fact that they are constantly providing services to refugees living here. These organizations are typically unable to attend government-organized consultations, as are some of the large international organizations specialized in this area and the capital municipality as well. They receive no response to their enquiries from government officials, they do not get any support, although they provide services to refugees that in other countries are provided by the state.
Another group of organizations working with refugees is at least acknowledged, and these are the agencies of the United Nations. According to the experts interviewed, it took about two years for the government to stop fearing and looking down on the various UN agencies, although this change of mind might have been initiated by the funding the UN provided to the Charity Council.
In addition to small voluntary and non-governmental organizations trying to help the settled immigrants according to their own possibilities, another tendency should be mentioned, which is the strengthening of the existing care system through external help. UNICEF and UNHCR experience shows that parallel systems are not sustainable: at the beginning of the war, the willingness to help/donate was very high in Hungary, and all organizations had plenty of resources. However, since donations have decreased, not everyone can continue the work they started. UNICEF is focusing on building the resilience of the existing supply system, the purpose of which would essentially be to better prepare the country, should a similar crisis arise in Hungary in the future. Obviously, this would also require receptiveness from the government, but the organizations interviewed could not confirm whether this exists or not.
During the months after the outbreak of the war, when the biggest influx of refugees reached Hungary, a common problem was the systematic lack of clear information about who was entitled to what kind of support, where should they get it and how can they apply for it. Zsolt Szekeres, senior legal officer at the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, told 444 that many refugees thought that the documents they received upon entry would immediately qualify them for ‘asylum seeker’ status, but this was not the case. Meanwhile, access to healthcare in Hungary, schooling for children, and the 22,800 HUF so-called sustenance allowance are all conditional upon at least applying for asylum seeker status.
Despite the fact that in many areas (e.g. healthcare) the problems are essentially the same as they were two years ago, it would be an exaggeration to say that there has been no progress. Right after crossing the border, the conditions for primary physical security are granted by the Hungarian state with the assistance of the Charity Council. This should be followed by legal security, but although there has been progress in this area (e.g. multilingual information leaflets on the legal possibilities of refugees edited by the Hungarian Helsinki Committee are available at the assistance points), there are shortcomings in this regard. According to several organisations that we interviewed, one of the major problems is the inadequacy of the vulnerability testing of refugees. There is no comprehensive method to assess who among the refugees has special needs (such as being pregnant, having a newborn baby, being sick, arriving as a minor without parents) and therefore these people have difficulties in accessing appropriate care.
For a very long time, Ukrainian parents were reluctant to let their children join the Hungarian state education system, despite the fact that a basic condition for granting the sustenance allowance is that children of school age must attend school. For these parents, their children studying in Hungarian would be a sign that what started out as a temporary flight from their country might turn into a permanent situation and might result in an integration that they might not be ready for. Accepting Hungarian education is likely to result in at least partially quitting Ukrainian education. In the meantime, Ukrainian education continues under special, albeit war-torn, conditions, with the participation of many children.
The policy of distribution does not make attending Hungarian schools easier either. There are small rural villages where about 200 Ukrainian refugees live, 120 of them being children. Although these kids belong to different age groups, they simply cannot fit into the local school. Neither they, nor the local schoolchildren, parents, teachers, or the infrastructure are prepared to integrate them. Despite the fact that the state provides schools with a subsidy of 130,000 HUF after each Ukrainian child (Ca. 330 EUR), the shortage of teachers is a persistent problem. In addition, educators teaching Hungarian as a foreign language would be needed in these schools, but they are quite hard to find.
Many Ukrainian children show problems with socialization. Although most of us consider 24 February 2022 as the date of the outbreak of the war, the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine has been going on for ten years. Due to the war and the Covid-19 pandemic, there are children who have been participating only in online education for up to five years, and this is the first time they have to attend a real-life school community. The situation might be easier for kindergarteners and younger schoolchildren compared to their older peers, having been introduced to different communities at a younger age. However, Ukrainian students studying here take the same entrance exams and school-leaving exams as Hungarians do, because, as we stated earlier, there are no exceptions.
Right after the outbreak of the war, there were no public accommodation facilities available and they had to be opened quickly. The government, in the absence of a well-functioning and well-prepared asylum office, transferred the problem to the municipalities and government offices: they had to contract with various hostels, which were subsidised by the state to the amount of 8,000 HUF (Ca. 20 EUR) a day to cover the costs of accommodation and three meals a day. This increased the supply of accommodation, as many service providers switched to hosting refugees which seemed beneficial for them amidst the lack of a secure source of income outside the high season.
In August 2023, the above-mentioned subsidy was reduced to 5,000 HUF (Ca. 13 EUR) per night, which decreased the amount of available accommodation, as it was no longer profitable for accommodation providers to accept Ukrainian refugees and provide them with three meals a day. Whereas previously the private accommodation system could absorb those who were for some reason left out of workers’ hostels, curbing the allowance has made things more difficult.
The state is trying to channel Ukrainians who stay permanently in Hungary into the rental system. Most of the public hostels accommodating refugees have closed down, in Budapest, for example, there are only 5 such establishments with only 450 beds. These hostels basically function as micro-universes where problems are represented on a small scale: some people are hospitalized, others completely give in to their misery because they cannot stand on their own feet anymore. In other cases, the adult members of the family work, the children go to school, so they are able to function as a family living according to certain rules, moreover, they use the free accommodation and meals to save money. These well-functioning families are in a minority, as the vast majority of the people living in these hostels are those who cannot support themselves without help.
Two years after the outbreak of the war, many establishments in the health sector are still unaware that asylum seekers should be provided with free care. Without knowledge of Hungarian and often English, navigating the Hungarian health system is a challenge for anyone, and Ukrainians living here often fail to access care. Specific solutions are in place to avoid such situations, for example an organization may agree with a general practitioner to provide care for its protegees. This is easier than enforcing rights.
Many young children and pregnant women arrived from Ukraine, and they are even more exposed to this problem. MártaBolba, head of the Dévai Reception Centre, which is a centre and community space for Ukrainian refugees, said that coping with the Hungarian prenatal care system is extremely challenging for Ukrainian refugees, so many women go home to give birth and then they return with their newborn.
Social exclusion is a general trend among Ukrainians who remain in Hungary. As only a small percentage of these refugees speak English, most of them cannot find a job that matches their qualifications, so even a doctor may end up as a factory worker in Hungary.
There is no direct state support for language learning for Ukrainian adults.
The situation of the Transcarpathian Roma people is quite unique: they are mostly Hungarian-speaking, therefore they do not face language barriers, but they have a very high rate of functional illiteracy. There is no state strategy targeted on their socialization and they encounter the biggest difficulties in integrating.
Several organizations mentioned that the mental health of the Ukrainian refugees living in Hungary shows a slightly deteriorating tendency, with an increasing number of people suffering from alcoholism and depression. The insecurity and unpredictability of the protracted war is having an impact on the refugees' daily lives as well. No matter how safe an environment they have created for themselves in Hungary might be, this new home is not their old home. Especially women and children have found themselves in a completely new situation, having to change their whole way of life, because Ukrainian society is more conservative than Hungarian society. In their original homes, typically the men have played the role of breadwinners and decision-makers within the family, and now women are forced to act as breadwinners and decision-makers on their own, and in a foreign environment. Relatively few refugees are thinking about returning, especially among those who have come from areas more severely affected by the war, such as Transcarpathia. Migration Aid conducted a survey through its own teachers on how many families would go back to Ukraine if the war ended right now (in the middle of the school year). Around 90 per cent said they would not return because they believe that even if the conflict ended, the most affected areas in Ukraine would remain so unstable for years that it would be impossible to live a normal life there.
There are no exceptions in this system where the state basically stepped back, even though the nature of the conflict meant that a high proportion of vulnerable groups had arrived. It is natural that the system is built to incentivize living independently as soon as possible, but there will always be people who, for whatever reason, cannot enter the labour market. The most vulnerable, those who are unable to support themselves, those with mental health problems cannot manage without help.
Several of our interviewees indicated that the urgent need to provide care for Ukrainian refugees resulted in such background collaborations that would not have been possible before. They refrained from providing specific examples for these collaborations because they feared that if they came to light, the government would make their functioning impossible.
A coordination and consultation mechanism was established among the organizations involved that is still in place today. Of course, this happened partly due to external pressure, as the area is now under-resourced and the organizations involved cannot afford to have several people working on the same issues, maintaining parallel structures.
It is difficult to come to general conclusions about the situation of refugees fleeing from the Ukrainian war, living in Hungary. The quality of their jobs depends on a number of factors, including their education and their language skills, meanwhile the quality of accommodation available and their access to education and health care depends much more on local conditions. Those living in Western Hungary may be slightly better off, but in reality they face similar problems across the whole country.
Although there are many problems and seemingly insurmountable challenges, it is important to point out that there are not only negative examples. Many refugees have found employment, they have established a normal daily routine and thus are able to function as a family even with the father remaining in Ukraine. The children are going to school, they are socializing in a peer community, learning Hungarian, and in Eastern Hungary some families have even been able to use their savings to buy a house. Those refugees however, who need help due to certain difficulties in their lives, have to face serious disadvantages.
This article was written in the framework of The Eastern Frontier Initiative (TEFI) project. TEFI is a collaboration of independent publishers from Central and Eastern Europe, to foster common thinking and cooperation on European security issues in the region. The project aims to promote knowledge sharing in the European press and contribute to a more resilient European democracy.
Members of the consortium are 444 (Hungary), Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland), SME (Slovakia), PressOne (Romania), and Bellingcat (The Netherlands).
The TEFI project is co-financed by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
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