Hungary’s Constitutional Evolution During the Last 25 Years
Hungary’s Constitutional Evolution During the Last 25 Years

Summary/Abstract: The author provides an overview of Hungary’s democratic Constitution of 1989, after sketching its historical development. This Constitution met the requirements of democracy, constitutionality, human rights, and market economy in every respect. It was this constitution with which the Republic of Hungary became a member of the European Union. Hungary’s first Constitutional Court – after having been elected freely by the Hungarian Parliament in 1990 – configured an internationally recognized common practice by virtue of interpreting the Constitution in the course of its application. Inaccuracies could have been mended with constitutional amendments. Instead, in 2011 a new socalled Fundamental Law was decreed with the votes of one single party, the governing party Fidesz. Although this new Fundamental Law corrected numerous defects and shortcomings, it at the same time radically transformed the system of public law, in fact withdrawing from the principles of the rule of law, democracy, and the separation of power. The legislator parried domestic (Constitutional Court, legal literature) and international (Council of Europe, European Union) criticism through serially importing numerous judicial regulation into the Fundamental Law that had previously been annulled by the Constitutional Court. Consequently, this lesion and abuse of Hungarian constitutionalism results not to be a singular, but a systemic problem, affecting the whole realm of Hungarian public law.

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