Kovács Szitkay Eszter: Ethnic Data and Law Enforcement — A Brief Insight into the Hungarian Context
2025/16
The chapter explores the relationship between ethnicity and data protection regulation and practice from a Hungarian context. Its aim is to outline a problem posing line of thought on the recurring appearance and disappearance of ethnic data in law enforcement work. In a country such as Hungary, where in principle the collection of such data is subject to very tight and strict regulation, the trajectory of such data can be partially traced, but many of its parts are obscured, a feature worthy of attention not only for its regulatory solutions, but also for its implications for criminology and ethnic profiling, for example. The dilemma is clear: we are dealing with highly sensitive data in an environment that could easily leave the subjects concerned in a vulnerable position; hence, knowledge of the practical steps of the procedure is crucial. As the regulation presented in this chapter indicates, beyond the dilemmas mentioned above, the practice must also face up to its inconsistency and contradictory nature. In order to unravel this emergent and vanishing dynamics of ethnic data, the chapter adopts the following thematic approach: first, it clarifies its concept and legal framework in the Hungarian context, including regulation at the European level, followed by a presentation of examples from the spectrum of law enforcement work, and finally concluding with the findings.