BUDAPEST: It may sound straightforward, but to the hauliers contracted to shift millions of tons of freight on Hungary’s busy motorways, the law, published in its final form on December 31, one day before it took effect, is a bureaucratic, costly nightmare, with serious implications for business.
Before Hungary’s general election last April, Viktor Orban, the prime minister, began to laud the advantages of a two-thirds “super majority” in parliament. It gave Hungary a big advantage over its central European peers – its competitors for foreign investment – because it allowed for “quick decision making”.
In an attempt to thwart such costly “trade”, Hungary’s economy ministry developed an electronic control and tracking system known by its Hungarian acronym Ekaer. All commercial shipments by road weighing more than 2 tones or worth more than €6,000 must be registered with the tax authorities, in advance. It affects all goods, from agricultural products to auto parts.
In an apparent reference to concerns about the security of information sent to the system, it noted that it “involves substantial competitive-relevant risks relating to data protection.”
An official at the Hungarian Hauliers Association (MKFE), which claims 3,000 members, told beyondbrics: “The main problems arise from the complexity of the transport-logistics operations.” A mass of information, including the weights, codes and values of goods, the tax numbers and addresses of all involved in the chain from, say, the Slovak producer through wholesalers and freight forwarders to the Hungarian buyer, plus the registration numbers of any trucks carrying the load, must be provided to the tax authorities before an Ekaer number, legalizing the shipment, can be issued.
“It is not entirely clear how the Hungarian buyer will know all the required details,” the official said, by way of understatement.
If it all sounds like the kind of pre-EU paperwork once laboriously checked at border stations, it is actually worse, because mobile customs checks are now carried out across Hungary on lorries doing both international and purely domestic deliveries.
Any infringement and the haulier can be fined up to 40 per cent of the value of goods found to be “of unverified origin”.
In response to frantic complaints from hauliers and logistics companies – or perhaps because tax inspectors themselves had not had time to understand the law – the government granted a one-month trial period before enforcing penalties, which was extended in January for a second month. Nonetheless, the data still has to be filed, accurately.
“I have 1,400 shipments in 160 trucks on the road every day,” says Arpad Vasarhelyi, head in Hungary of DB Schenker, a German logistics group. “Sorry to say, we have people, not robots. It’s absolutely normal that they make two or three mistakes in doing this.”
