The Foreign Parliamentary Collection, founded in 1962, is a unique collection housed in the Library of the Hungarian Parliament. However, the various parliamentary documents in this collection had been acquired by our library regularly since 1878, which has been made possible by a chain of mutual exchange relations between the Hungarian Parliament and a great number of legislatures from the far corners of the world. Such exchange relations were established with the Belgian, German, Austrian, Prussian, Italian parliaments (1878), with the House of Commons of the United Kingdom (1881) or with the US Congress in 1884, to name but a few.

In accordance with the aforementioned mutual relations, the Hungarian Parliament sent its official documents – records of parliamentary debates, parliamentary papers, indices and almanacs – to the given foreign parliaments and in exchange received the same kind of publications from those parliaments, which were then processed and stored by the Library of the Hungarian Parliament.

As from the 1980s, printed volumes of parliamentary papers, records of parliamentary debates and indices had been supplanted by microfiche. Since more and more national parliaments started providing online full-text access to their documents, the exchange of printed volumes has been phased out.

Currently the following countries' parliamentary documents are almost fully available in the collection: United Kingdom, Germany, France, Austria, the United States and the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia. With regards to Germany, the records of debates and papers of a number of German state legislatures – namely Bavaria, Anhalt, Baden, Hessen, Prussia, Saxony, Schwarzburg-Rudolfstadt, Schwarzburg-Sonderhausen and Württemberg – also form part of the collection.

Moreover, the parliamentary publications of the following countries can also be partially consulted at the Foreign Parliamentary Collection: the Kingdom of Serbia (1899-1938), the Kingdom of Dalmatia (1861-1915) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (1900-1918).

All of the printed volumes of the Foreign Parliamentary Collection are stored in our off-site stacks, which means they are transported to the reading room only twice a week. Prospective users will need to order them in advance by e-mail konyvtar(kukac)parlament.hu.

Documents of the Inter-Parliamentary Union also belong to the Foreign Parliamentary collection, and can be found therein. The Foreign Parliamentary Collection has a reference section with secondary literature on foreign parliaments and parliamentarism as well, which can be accessed in the main reading room of the Library of the Hungarian Parliament.

Contact:

Reference Librarian: Gergely Zágoni-Bogsch
Phone: (+36-1) 441-4087
E-mail: gergely.zagoni-bogsch(at)parlament.hu