Moving further from previous pieces published here on the topic of sovereignty protection regarding Hungary and the EU, an international comparison is now in order to see whether foreign influence is a real problem in other countries as well, and to look at how they are trying to address this challenge.

There are two countries, the United Kingdom and Singapore, which already acted against external influence in the 2020s, but the reasons and events that triggered these actions differ greatly. In the following, I will examine how the United Kingdom is taking action against foreign influence, what institutions have been established or strengthened, and whether these measures have had any impact on Hungarian regulation, and whether it would be worthwhile for Hungarian legislators to adopt certain elements.

The UK’s National Security Act: Background and Objectives

On July 11, 2023, the UK Parliament passed the National Security Act, which is considered the most significant national security legislation of the past century in the UK. The purpose of the Act is to deal more effectively with 21st-century state-sponsored threats–espionage, sabotage, foreign interference–considering the new challenges of the digital age and increasing global geopolitical tensions. The law was a clear response to previous Russian, Chinese, and Iranian operations targeting the country, which directly threaten the sovereignty and security of the UK.

The United Kingdom’s national security regulations, being primarily based on the Official Secrets Act of 1911, justified the necessity for an updated legislation, as the century-old rules were unable to tackle contemporary challenges such as cyberattacks, information operations, and to handle the intricate legal problems brought about by increased foreign economic influence.

The adoption of more modern regulations was further justified by the 2018 Skripal poisoning, when, according to British authorities, Russian agents attempted to kill a former Russian double agent and his daughter with the nerve agent Novichok; and by the report published by MI5 in 2022–2023 on Iranian, Chinese, and Russian influence operations, which also included assassination plans targeting British citizens.

The new legislation highlights three main activities: espionage, sabotage, and acts of influence carried out on behalf of foreign states. The law also introduces specific provisions against terrorist acts, and other such additional regulations were introduced, expanding the powers of law enforcement agencies and national security services. In certain cases, the approval of the Secretary of State for Justice or the Attorney General is required for certain procedural or investigative actions.

The law introduced new, detailed provisions for the criminal prosecution of state-sponsored intelligence activities. Espionage includes, for example, obtaining, copying, or transmitting protected information at the direction of a foreign power, providing access to information systems to a foreign entity, or knowingly assisting a foreign intelligence service operating in the United Kingdom. In the most serious cases, the penalty can be life imprisonment.

The law creates a separate offense for sabotage directed by another state that targets British infrastructure, public services, or military facilities. The offense specifically highlights acts such as cyberattacks and disruption of “critical national infrastructure ”, such as crippling the state’s energy, water, or transportation networks.

The law recognizes as a serious crime anyone who: attempts to influence British political or legal decision-making on behalf of a foreign entity; secretly supports political campaigns or representatives with foreign financial resources; or disseminates misleading or manipulated information for the purpose of shaping public opinion. The legislator emphasized that the purpose of this provision is to create transparency and protect democratic processes from “background influence operations”. It is important to note that this section punishes illegal influence activities, especially those carried out on behalf of another state or at its request. In the case of interference in elections, for example, no new criminal offense is created, but the law places greater emphasis on foreign interference and punishes it more severely.

Problems at FIRSt Sight?

One of the most significant innovations of the law is the introduction of the so-called FIRS (Foreign Influence Registration Scheme), a mandatory registration system under which all natural or legal persons must register if they carry out political or strategic activities in the United Kingdom on behalf of or on the instructions of a foreign state. The system distinguishes between two levels: one is general political influence, the other relates to activities involving increased risk.

Failure to register is considered a serious criminal offense. It is important to note that FIRS targets individuals or organizations that legally engage in activities that can influence legal or political decision-making, and those must be registered in the system.

The aim of the system is to make foreign agent activities transparent and thus curb hidden forms of influence, such as the covert operations of think tanks or political consultants. Some refer to the regulation as the UK’s FARA Act because the regulation is very similar to the US law (FARA) regulating foreign political advocacy on US soil, but in fact the FITS (Australian Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme) legislation also influenced British regulation.

As I mentioned, the US FARA Act had an enormous impact on the UK’s National Security Act. To specify this connection, I will briefly introduce the regulation mentioned before. The US FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act) was enacted in 1938 because of the growing radical influence of the Nazi Germany. The legislation was modified over the decades, and now it requires certain agents (lobbyist, PR counsels, information-service employees, or political consultants) of foreign principals who are engaged in political activities or other activities specified under the statute to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts, and disbursements in support of those activities. The agents have to register with the FARA Unit in the Department of Justice. The FARA Unit makes registration information and disclosures available to the public to inform the public about the activities of foreign agents within the United States.

After the short explanation, we return to the UK. Although the law aims to strengthen national security, several civil rights organizations and researchers have emphasized that the use of overly broad concepts, especially in the case of “cooperation with foreign powers”, could jeopardize press freedom, or investigative journalism, and academic freedom, because some university research is targeted by foreign countries, and that also influences the UK’s national interest.  However, the contradictions caused by the law are not new. In 2013, the Security Minister at the time emphasized that the country’s national security must be strengthened, but at the same time civil liberties must also be respected, and this balance is extremely fragile. The actual impact of the law on this balance will be determined by future practice, especially since an amendment to the law came into force on July 1 2025, which still did not reassure the public. As we can see in the UK the National Security Act, and the regulations made were controversial because of the broad definitions. That problem also appeared in Hungary when the National Assembly passed the National Sovereignty Protection Act in December 2023.

Like Two Peas in a Pod? Comparative Reflections on the Hungarian and the UK Legal Frameworks

The UK’s National Security Act, as its name suggests, takes a national security/criminal law approach to combating foreign influence. The law classifies several acts as criminal offenses that constitute foreign interference, and the penalties are very severe. Due to the criminal law approach, no separate body was created, as it was sufficient to strengthen the powers of the police, national security agencies, and the public prosecutor’s office. In contrast, the Hungarian law on the protection of national sovereignty chose a different path, but nonetheless provoked similar reactions among the public as its UK counterpart.

There is, however, a significant difference in that while the UK system has tightened certain criminal offenses and introduced a registration system to ensure transparency in public life, Hungary has not tightened its criminal code simultaneously with the introduction of the sovereignty protection framework. In Hungary, a new offense has been introduced for cases where someone uses funds received from abroad for campaign purposes, but the penalty is also up to three years’ imprisonment. The police and national security agencies have not been given any additional powers, but a new office (The Sovereignty Protection Office) has been created, which can order investigations and inform Hungarian residents about foreign influence and organizations that engage in disinformation activities. In my opinion, it may be worthwhile for Hungarian regulations to move in the Anglo-Saxon direction, whereby a public registration system should be introduced for organizations that can influence domestic public life, so that their operations will be transparent. However, the situation is further complicated by the fact that Hungary still has no lobbying law, and, considering Anglo-Saxon legal thinking, it is not certain that this would work effectively in a post-communist country belonging to the continental legal tradition. Currently, only one new criminal offense has been introduced in Hungary, while a transparency scheme, such as those seen in the UK and the countries mentioned earlier, has not been implemented. There was a bill that sought to introduce a similar scheme, but in the end, debate on the so-called transparency law was postponed, so it is still possible that Hungarian regulations will move in the direction of the Anglo-Saxon model.

Conclusion

In the 21^st century, states face new challenges, one of which is acting against foreign influence as a consequence of globalization. The difficulty of regulation lies in the fact that, although many agree with the goal that states must take action against foreign influence, the tools necessary to do so undoubtedly involve restrictions on individual freedoms, such as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom of the press. Inadequate regulation inevitably leaves citizens vulnerable, but it is unclear whether this vulnerability is to foreign states or to their own government.  This means that all lawyers, academics, and other professionals have a very important role to play in promoting a discourse at the national and even international level on how to guarantee the security of states without disproportionately restricting individual freedoms. With regard to the UK’s regulations, it can also be said that the concerns raised are real, but it would be premature to respond to them by saying that individual freedoms would be at risk, because subsequent practices and the courts may introduce appropriate safeguards into this law.

Gergely Kerkovits is a law graduate and PhD student of the Péter Pázmány Catholic University in Budapest. He is writing his doctoral dissertation on the relationship between civil society organizations and the state. His research focuses on freedom of association, sovereignty protection, public consultation, fundamental rights protection in international organizations. He is also a junior researcher of the MCC Public Law Center and intern at the Constitutional Court of Hungary