Year of EU entry: 2004 / Capital city: Budapest / Population: 10.1 million

Hungary is a landlocked state with many neighbours – Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria. It is mostly flat, with low mountains in the north.

The ancestors of ethnic Hungarians were the Magyar tribes, who moved into the Carpathian Basin in 896. The Hungarian language is unlike the other neighbouring languages and is only distantly related to Finnish and Estonian.
The capital city of Budapest, which originally was two separate cities, Buda and Pest, straddles the River Danube. It is rich in history and culture and famed for its curative springs.

Hungary is a highly musical country whose traditional folk music inspired its great composers such as Liszt, Bartók and Kodály.