AI in policing: Hungary
Every documented deployment of artificial intelligence by law enforcement in Hungary currently recorded on this site, drawn from the deployment tracker. Each entry is tied to a published source and carries the date it was last checked.
Deployments
HU Hungarian National Police Retrospective Facial Recognition (PND search) Operational
- Legal basis
- 2025 amendments to Hungarian law, in force 15 April 2025, extending permitted FR use from custodial-sentence offences to all infraction proceedings
- Oversight
- None domestically; subject of complaints to the European Commission
Three amendments passed by Hungary's Parliament within 24 hours in March 2025 without public debate extended facial recognition from serious offences to ALL infraction procedures -- the examples given by challengers being identifying Pride march attendees or jaywalkers. The same legislative package created a legal basis to ban Pride marches. Cameras were installed along the Budapest Pride route in June 2025 (reportedly the largest in Hungarian history); police announced 7 July 2025 that no participants would be fined. Civil society coalition (Civil Liberties Union for Europe, EDRi, ECNL, HCLU) argues this meets the EU AI Act's definition of a prohibited 'real-time' remote biometric identification system rather than merely high-risk 'post' identification, and wrote to the European Commission urging infringement proceedings; 17 EU member states have formally accused Hungary of contravening EU values over the wider package. A peer-reviewed article appears in the Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law (July 2026). Whether the Commission has opened AI Act infringement proceedings specifically was not established in this research pass.
Source: EDRi; European Center for Not-for-Profit Law; Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law · last checked 2026-08-24