The Regulation of Competence in the Act on Public Administrative Proceedings

Abstract

The paper examines regulation on competence in the Act on Public Administrative Proceedings (Ákr.) in Hungary. Regulation on competence is a basic guarantee of constitutionality and rule of law regarding administrative procedures, since public authority can only be carried out by bodies that have democratic legitimacy. However, the Ákr. does not cover several issues that are fundamentally relevant to this subject, e.g. delegation of competence and second instance authority. The hypothesis of the research is that the main reason for that is the intent of broadening the government's policymaking and organisational powers. In addition, the paper examines whether these intentions and the Ákr. are consistent with the abovementioned constitutional requirements.