Introduction

Abstract

The introduction chapter provides an overview of the Hungarian constitutional system from 2010 until today. This system is best characterized by populist constitutionalism. We argue that the resilience of the Hungarian legal system suffered hardly irreplaceable damages from 2010, mostly due to the cumulative effect of external impacts (Coronavirus crisis, financial crises, migration crises, war in Ukraine etc.) coupled with decesive internal factors such as the populist term and its new constitutional order. In our chapter, we mainly focus on the role of emergency powers in the new constitutional order.We have three central points. First, the entitlement to impose emergency powers has been overused and, by and large, misused in Hungary. Even today, the integrity of the legal system is attacked by subsequently prolonged state of emergency regulations relying on a permanent state of emergency eroding democratic processes.Second, we argue that populist constitutionalism during the Coronavirus crisis resulted in the lack of legal certainty: the rapidly increasing number of legislations had a counter effect of maintaining the rule of law standards. Thirdly, in this introductory chapter, we argue that rapid, effective, and (often uncensored) lawmaking is not an unheard reaction to international crises. However, when they appear to be only a façade that enables populist constitutionalism to eliminate checks and balances, the rule of law and democracy are at high risk.