Regulation No. 7/2017 (1 June) of the Ministry of Justice about registered seat services entered into force on 1 July 2017 in connection with the amendment of the Companies Act which set out among others the following important regulations:

The agreement shall be in writing between the principal (company) and the agent who provides the seat service.

The agreement shall not be a fixed-term contract only if the company was established for a fixed period of time. The right to terminate shall not be exercised during the first year after the conclusion of the contract.

Only those properties may be used as the seat of a company which are exclusively owned by the agent who provides the seat service or for which the provider's user rights have been registered at the Land Registry.

The agent shall ensure that the mails addressed to the company are taken over at the registered seat and shall also notify the company on that fact within one working day after the receipt of any mail.

The Regulation No. 9/2017. (VII. 18.) of the Ministry of Justice on the amendment of the above Regulation was published on 19 July 2017 and entered into force on the day following its publication in which the most important changes are the following:

The agent shall be entitled to provide seat service if the owner of the property gave prior written consent to providing seat and one of the following conditions is fulfilled:

  1. the parties are affiliated companies or companies linked by virtue of participating interests under the Accounting Act,
  2. the agent is registered in the Trade Registry as the company's delivery agent, or
  3. further from providing registered seat for the company there is a civil law relationship between the parties for providing long-term accounting services.

The parties shall harmonize their existing agreements for providing seat with the new regulations until 30 June 2018, the latest, and if there was not any written agreement between them, such contracts have to be put in writing.

The existing agreements for registered seat services shall be ineffective on the following day the above deadline (i.e. 30 June 2018) if the contract does not correspond to the aforementioned new regulations.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.