Hungarian Passport Surpasses Europe’s Giants in Global Rankings

The latest survey on how strong each country is in the international arena is out, writes Világgazdaság. An important aspect of this is each country’s passport, the degree of acceptance it enjoys and the entitlements that go with it. The Hungarians are lucky – theirs is almost unrivaled in the world.

VisaGuide has carried out and published a thorough investigation when it produced its recent Passport Index research. In it, passports from 199 countries were compared against a complex set of criteria.

This includes in particular

• visa-free access,
• “global mobility”, i.e. passport acceptance
• or the existence of a digital signature.

VisaGuide found that passports from one Asian and four European countries made it into the top five.

Singapore tops the imaginary podium, followed by Spain, Italy, France and Hungary.

Therefore, according to the official ranking, Hungarian passports are the fifth most valuable in the world.

The Singaporean passport is the strongest passport in the world as of November 2024. It is followed by the Spanish, Italian, French, and Hungarian passports respectively, to complete the top-five list of strongest passports for 2024.

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— VisaGuide.World (@visaguideworld) November 5, 2024

However, VisaGuide also stressed that no two passports are equally strong because their own scores are influenced by many factors. Thus, each passport has a unique score. This is based on GDP, tourism potential and the country’s overall development index, among other factors.

Of course, the score depends on the visa requirements of the destination country and the number of countries to which a given passport can be used visa-free. This is also true in reverse, hence the passport score of a given country takes away from the score if visitors can only enter with a visa. In addition, a distinction is made here between paper and digital permits. Moreover, it makes a difference where the visa can be applied for, if only at the embassy, this is a major disadvantage.

Paradoxically, the strength of a passport is also determined by the number of countries to which visitors can travel without the document.

To some extent, this may explain the prominence of EU countries.

However, of course entry bans also have an impact. Each ban between countries gives a multiplier of minus 0.5. The ranking is also clarified by the fact that if a passport holder can enter a high-rated country without a visa, the country gets more extra points than if he or she can enter a low-rated country freely.

European Passports Rank According to VisaGuide Passport Index as of September 2024

*ranking is assessed globally#europe #eu #europeanpassport #visaguideindex #passport #passportindex #schengenvisainfo pic.twitter.com/4Rs2ddK7D0

— SchengenVisaInfo (@schengen_info) September 10, 2024

Some interesting facts about the list:

• Canada ranks 34th,
• Romania is 39th,
• the United States is 42nd,
• Sanctioned Russia is 95th,
• Germany is sixth, Switzerland and Austria eighth and ninth.

Hence, according to VisaGuide’s approach, the Hungarian passport is the envy of the Germans, the Austrians and the Swiss.

Via Világgazdaság; Featured image via Pixabay