Hungary is in the EU and in fact our Prime Minister Viktor Orban was the recent President of the EU (they serve 6 month terms and it is a joint Presidency with always having 2 Presidents with joint powers). But it is not in the Eurozone and no it would not be advantageous to do so at least until the world's economic problems are fixed. Hungary carried a lot of debt to Switzerland in the form of mortgages and business loans. Because the Hungarian Forint has fallen dramatically since 2008 against the Swiss Frank the borrowers have seen their payments double which caused a huge problem. Only about 30% of homes here carry mortgages but that is enough to cause a crisis. Consider that only 5% of US Mortgages were sub-prime and likely to default and it caused the entire economic collapse in the US (but all because of fraudulent ratings by S&P and Moody's as well as what should be illegal CDO's such as Credit Default Swaps (a pyrimid scheme where each bank insures the others for a fee) The loans from Switzerland were inspired because the IMF made it a condition for entry in the EU and the IMF is "advised" by JP Morgan and in fact they are the ones that instructed Greece to lie about their debt so as to gain entrance into the EU. Nonetheless, Hungary was faced with a similar problem as the US with toxic mortgages. So, what do you think Hungary did (as compared to the US)? The put a freeze on foreclosures and the government has now purchased all eligible (the majority) mortgages in arrears lowered the payments back to what it was before 2008 and has wrapped the debt into the mortgages for a period of 5 years. This may be extended as needed. The end result is it calmed the nation. permitted everyone to stay in their homes, paid off the Swiss Bankers, allowed businesses to continue to operate and thus provided stability to the country. At the same time they have levied a bank tax of 100% on bank profits to all banks in Hungary. Hungary has also implemented a severe austerity program though which may be causing a different problem. Unemployment hovers around 11%. Approximately 37% of working age Hungarians do not work either due to early retirements or disability compensation (which is extremely hard to get here and must be renewed every 6 months but still approximately 30% of Hungarians are on disability...a result of poor safety standards under the Soviet Union). After the collapse of the Soviet Union Hungary reduced the military by approximately 80%, the national police by the same, and firemen as well. Many of these workers were retirement eligible (they have different formula than we use in the US but it ends up being approximately the same and I'll speak to that further down). The new Fidez Government won the last election by a clear majority and as a result has the power to do pretty much anything they want which included writing a new constitution. The bummer here is that because it is in the constitution a lot of the changes are retro-active. For example all early retirements are cancelled as of next Dec 31 and all those retired people must go back to work. They have made disability even harder to get so the result is an additional 300,000 people are going to be looking for work in January in an already overcrowded unemployment scheme.. As to the previous retirement system for the military you earn credit for time served 1 year of service for each year served. But, deployments count double as do training periods. So, for instance pilots who fly every day are earning double credit and it builds up fast. You can easily get to 100% in 15 years if you spend a lot of time deployed or in the field. But, here is the big difference. The percentage is from a single fixed rate which applies to everyone regardless of rank. I believe it to be 350,000 Forints or approximately $1750 dollars at the 100% rate. For disability it is much the same except it is based on the Hungarian minimum wage of 80,000 Forints (roughly $400) so it isn't all that much when compared to the US. Unemployment is also based on the 80,000 Forints so you can see how this will cut costs at the expense of the military, police and firemen . The ironic things is that it was this same Fidez government that forced them to retire in the first place now they are cutting their retirement benefits. They will get them back though at age 57 but a lot of these guys are less than 50 years old.