From 1 April 2022, substantial changes were made to the provisions of the government decree on the construction and construction-related profession exercising activities, i.e. designers, construction technical supervisors, responsible technical leaders and construction experts.
The new provision of the decree now uniformly provides for all activities subject to the decree that a firm may start and continue a professional activity subject to the decree if it has announced its intention to do so and its managing director, member contributing personally or employee working at least 20 hours a week has a professional qualification in the given field and the activity is carried out by the person holding the qualification.
The successful entitlement exam (in Hungarian: “jogosultsági vizsga”) has become a condition for the permission of all profession exercising activities subject to the decree, however, the obligatory “report” (in Hungarian: “beszámoló”) that the profession exerciser should have completed within one year, has been eliminated. In the event that the level of specialisation cannot be established from the qualification certificate during the examination of the fulfilment of the qualification requirement, the expert body operated by the Hungarian Chamber of Engineers or the Hungarian Chamber of Architects is entitled to give an expert opinion on the specialisation of the qualification during the permission procedure in the first and second instance, which is taken into account by the regional and national chambers when establishing the entitlement.
According to the new rules, the regional chamber may award a professional title to an applicant who is a member of the chamber. However, as a result of the amendments, the title of "investment adviser" and the title of "particularly experienced" have been deleted.
The types of training have also been modified, resulting in that the following two types of training will be required: (i) a legal training during the five-year training period, and (ii) a professional training in the manner specified in the regulations of the national chamber. Furthermore, the provisions of the decree on the legal consequences have also been amended, for instance, the secretary of the regional chamber shall impose a fine of HUF 100,000 on the responsible technical leader and the construction technical supervisor for violation of the conflict of interest rules.
By Lidia Suveges, Attorney at law, KCG Partners Law Firm