First reports under DAC6 were due recently from those who are parties to a cross-border transactions. Concurrently, at the last possible moment, the Hungarian Ministry of Finance published a Guide on certain issues related to the fulfilment of the reporting obligation. It is advisable, in particular, for accountants, consultants, lawyers and banks to carefully study this 38-page document, as any of them could easily fall within the scope of the reporting obligation.

At the beginning of February 2021, a new decree of the Hungarian Minister of Finance (“Decree”) was published on the detailed rules of the execution of the Money Laundering Act for certain non-financial service providers and the development and the minimum requirements of the operation of the filtering system. The decree enters into force on 19 March 2021.

In the last decade, the amount of minimum wage and the guaranteed minimum wage has been rising year by year. However, the process of determining the minimum wage in 2021 was different from previous years in two ways: firstly, the agreement on the wage, after 7 negotiation sessions, was not reached by the end of December 2020, therefore, after reaching agreement at the end of January 2021, the new minimum wage figures are in effect from 1 February 2021, and secondly, the increase was lower as seen before in the last years.

Act Ban & Karika has helped Swiss-based Elpro, a manufacturer of environmental monitoring solutions for pharmaceutical, life science, biotech, and health care industries, establish its Hungarian office and implement relevant GDPR compliance procedures. 

CMS has advised OTP Group affiliate OTP Mobile, a Hungarian online payment platform, on a FinTech cooperation agreement with Raiffeisen. 

“The hot topic in Hungary right now is the January 2021 amendments to the Code of Civil Procedure” says Komor Hennel Attorneys Managing Partner Ildiko Komor Hennel. “The act passed in the 1950s had one previous major overhaul back in 2017,” she says, adding that the recent amendments were necessitated by “modern times, technological updates, procedural effectiveness and business reality – just imagine not being able to file documents electronically!”

Hungarian lawyer Geza Nagy has joined LyondellBasell in the Netherlands as Compliance Officer.

Austrian lawyer Josef Holzschuster will be relocating from Budapest to Amsterdam, having been appointed Head of Legal, Markets DA at Philips, in which capacity he will lead the worldwide Legal Team for the Philips Domestic Appliances business, reporting to the General Counsel for DA, also located in Amsterdam.

Zoltan Lengyel, the current Managing Partner of the Allen & Overy Budapest office, has announced that he will retire on May 1, with Counsel Miklos Kadar taking over the management of the Budapest office from that date.

The book European Court Procedure – A Practical Guide (Bloomsbury-Hart, Oxford, 730 p.) has been written by professionals having a combined experience of 70 years as referendaires at the EU Courts or members of the European Commission Legal Service. It gives a detailed and practice-oriented overview of the whole spectrum of litigation procedure before the EU judiciary. It also presents the entire system of judicial avenues that enable litigants to enforce their rights under EU law against European institutions, Member States or private parties.

Csaba Rusznak has joined KNP Law Nagy-Koppany Lencs & Partners to lead the firm’s Dispute Resolution Practice Group. At the same time, Oliver Koppany has joined the firm as Foreign Legal Counsel.

The supervisory activity of the National Media and Infocommuncations Authority (“NMIA”) and the operation of communication service providers will be highly affected by the implemented provisions of the European Electronic Communications Code that prescribes the applicable new European framework of electronic communications.

According to a press release of the Hungarian Competition Authority (GVH) issued on 16 December 2020, GVH is launching a market analysis to investigate how customer datasets of e-commerce companies are created and also the role of such assets in the competition between online stores. The investigation will further cover the extent of the customers’ awareness of such data collection and its influence on their decisions.

In December 2020, KELER Kozponti Ertektar Zrt. (KELER Central Securities Depository Ltd.) (KELER), the central depository of Hungary, was granted an authorisation under the Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR Regulation) and can now offer its clients services supporting an efficient and secure securities market as a central securities depository operating under unified European regulations.

At the end of December 2020, several new regulations have been accepted to facilitate constructions due to the state of emergency. As one of the most important news, the Hungarian Government has extended the application of simple notification to the construction activities of a residential building including maximum six flats, but having a total net floor space of maximum 1,000 sqm.

Act Ban & Karika has helped Germany's Bader Group reorganize within the framework of the cross-border insolvency proceeding of its Hungarian subsidiary.

The Hungarian Government announced at the end of 2020, that similarly to previous years, it will launch the fifth edition of the so called ‘EPITO’ (“Constructing”) program.

Balazs Kovacs, Anna Buzas, and Gabor Marky have been promoted to Partner at BPV Jadi Nemeth in Budapest.