Even though the car I keep in Budapest is now a dozen years old and covered with dings and scrapes, I’ve recently been thinking of having its doors and quarterpanels straightened out. So I’ve been doing a little research on auto body work in Hungary. And here’s what I’ve discovered so far: If I actually do decide to get the old clunker spiffed up, I’ll almost certainly be adding to the long list of legal offenses I end up committing each year, this time owing to some new bureaucratic rules governing the auto body industry.
The issue here came to light late last year, when vg.hu reported on the protests of auto body service providers about a new slate of regulations that were enacted in January.
Among them are rules that require them to report all their data and permits pertaining to a central electronic system, and likewise to check whether the vehicle they are working with is legal. The body shop owners polled by the paper said that the added burdens are likely to further push the industry underground.
As for how underground the business already is, consider that, according to the president of the National Auto Body Association, there are fewer than 200 legal body shops in operation in Hungary today, compared to an estimated 1,400 “illegal” ones. And to understand just how strongly the legal players in the industry feel about the changes, the same association said he was resigning to protest the rules. What a wreck.