It was more than one decade ago that the former Data Protection and Minorities Ombudsmen drafted jointly the requirements relating to data management concerning ethnic identity and its perception. However, both minority and anti-discrimination legislation have gone through significant changes since then. Social relations have been restructured and the system of ethnic data management has been criticized many times by minority communities and their members as well as by professionals. The Consitutional Court established in its Resolution 45/2005 (XII. 14.) that false declarations relating to the belonging to a minority group may endanger minority rights. The 2008 report of the State Audit Office focused on the problem that targeted funding aiming to promote minority integration can not be monitored without relevant ethnic data. NGO-s have also criticized the present system of handling ethnic data as a factor hindering action against discrimination while restricting access to data necessary for the recognition of discrimination.

Therefore Dr Ernő Kállai, Ombudsman for the rights of national and ethnic minorities, and Dr András Jóri, Data Protection Commissioner considered it necessary to take steps towards the reconsideration of ethnic data management rules. Their ex officio investigation on ethnic data management was launched in April 2009, while the recommendations were made public in November 2009.

The main findings and recommendations of the report can be summarized as the following:

Ethnic data management is a particularly complex and diversified topic. Institutions of legal protection are therefore permanently facing a paradox, namely that while the discriminator is always aware of who belongs to certain minorities, authorities responsible for redressing discrimination or elaborating positive measures do not and can not obtain any data in this respect. A 2008 study of the State Audit Office on the use of state funding targeting Roma minorities - which stirred up a great storm at the time of its publication - underlined that without identifying the target group and its members neither is it possible to elaborate and execute efficient measures, nor to monitor their efficiency and to transform strategies in line with the results of these monitoring mechanisms.

Numerous international documents and recommendations emphasize that countries should obtain the most possibly accurate data available on the number and social-economic status of minority groups living in their territories. Events that occurred in the past years in Hungary also indicate the necessity of data collection. (Such are the attacks against Roma families raising the suspicion of racist motivations or the proliferation of media news identifying Roma minority with the notion of crime and criminality.)

The situation is also unresolved in the area of political representation of minority groups: even following the 2005 modification of the Act on Minorities, the Minorities' Ombudsman received many complaints questioning the minority origin, consequently the legitimacy of minority self-government representatives.

The Commissioners' proposals aim to provide constitutional and practically applicable solutions for the dilemmas concerning ethnic data management. They are offering alternatives to be applied in special areas such as the fight against acts of discrimination, the adjudication of different supports, the practice of political rights, the management of statistical data registered in criminal justice or in the course of censuses and the problems of child protection-related "origin-registers".

The main question relating to this subject is the following: "Who belongs to a given minority group?" Hungarian regulation in force is based on the principle of free declaration of identity, in accordance with Article 3 of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of the Council of Europe. This right, however, does not include the right of anyone to peremptorily choose which minority group to belong. According to the interpretation of the experts of the Council of Europe the subjective choice of the individual is inseparably linked to some objective criteria determining the self-identification of the person concerned. The Hungarian regulation in force, however, does not contain such criteria, hence the substance of minority rights becomes incidental.

Therefore, the Ombudsmen propose to elaborate an objective system of guarantee criteria presuming real relations between the individual rights and the entitled. It is a basic question that under what kind of objective criteria can someone be considered as a member of a minority community in certain situations. Does a uniform and unified system of criteria exist for determining this? Considering the diversity of life situations the Ombudsmen recommend different solutions instead of uniformization. Accordingly they have drafted a total of four lists containing primary and secondary criteria. The first refers to the victims of discrimination and racist crimes, the second to the subjects of equal opportunities measures, the third to the practice of minority rights including financial advantages, while the fourth refers to the practice of representative rights.

It is important to specify who is entitled to judge the belonging of a certain individual to a minority community in respect of certain legal relations. In case of discrimination and racist crimes the relevant authorities (e.g. police, public prosecutor's office, judiciary, and ombudsman) presume the origin of the injured party based on the above mentioned criteria. In case of minority self-governmental elections an elected committee - representing the given minority community - would ponder criteria relating to the right to vote in the course of the compilation of the electoral register. In other cases the objective guarantee considerations are pondered in the recommendation of the local minority self-government in line with the principle of recognition by minority community. It is important to emphasise that neither local nor central registers, "lists" would therefore be prepared on persons belonging to some minorities. (With the exception of the already existing electoral register.)

The report on data management contains detailed recommendations concerning specific fields, such as ethnic data in criminal proceedings, and the combatting of ethnic profiling. Here it has to be pointed out that ethnic affiliation of the perpetrator must not have any relevance; therefore only the collection of statistical data independent from the individual perpetrators is necessary. In the case of victims, however, an individualised data collection seems necessary in accordance with international recommendations in order to measure and finally combat racist violance. The report also emphasises the importance of the national census, and formulates a set of recommendations for the legislator in line with the opinion of the European Conference of Statisticians relating to censuses to be held in the 2010s. Correct census data are of vital importance especially as they may serve as starting points and correlation bases for further research and strategical planning. During the inquiry special emphasis was made on the theme of adoption and child protection, where the Ombudsmen recommend besides other measures the elaboration of a so called "Family legendarium" for the reconstruction of the past, the family history and the origin of children placed in child protection care. However, they raise objections to the registration of ethic data of children waiting for adoption.

The Ombudsmen are convinced that resolving the problems dealt with in the report is the pre-requisite of the elaboration of a veritably effective minority policy and that their proposals might serve as good starting points for resolving the drafted problems.