Unorthodoxy in legislation: The Hungarian experience

Deak, Daniel

doi:10.1556/socec.36.2014.2.2

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…The fact that the Hungarian Fidesz-government has enjoyed the support of a two-thirds (constitutional) parliamentary majority in the unicameral National Assembly since 2010 with almost no interruption 7 may give us the impression that it had no problems with complying with the formal rule of law criteria. The reality however is that one could since 2010 witness an incredible legislative hyperinflation combined with the acceleration of law-making at any expense (Kazai 2019a, b, c), the rapid and frequent re-regulation of complete areas of law (Chronowski and Varju 2016;Deák 2014;Laki 2015), the constant disregard of the requirements of the adequate preparation of legislative proposals (Drinóczi 2020), the large number of procedural irregularities committed in the parliamentary legislative process (Kazai 2021), the enactment of laws targeting or favouring particular individuals or groups (Bakó et al 2021, pp. 38-44) and so on.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enforcement of a Formal Conception of the Rule of Law as a Potential Way Forward to Address Backsliding: Hungary as a Case Study

Bárd¹,

Kazai²

2022

Hague J Rule Law

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The rule of law as a foundational value of European integration has been taken for granted in the Member States, along the presumption that “once a democracy, always a democracy”. This optimistic presumption proved to be wrong, when in the 2010s a top-down and systemic decline in the rule of law started, first in Hungary, then in Poland. Even though EU action against rule of law backsliding in the Member States is of existential importance for the whole European project, EU institutions seem to be either silent or too slow and inefficient when tackling the problem. In this paper we are focusing on the Court of Justice of the EU, which was emphasizing violations of a substantive understanding of the rule of law. Against this background we argue that adherence to a formal understanding or at the minimum incorporating arguments related to a formal concept of the rule of law would have been beneficial both in terms of speed and desired effect. Taking Hungary as an example we show that the lack of preliminary consultations and impact assessments during lawmaking, the enactment of significant legislative reforms in accelerated procedures without any adequate justification, the adoption of ad hominem laws, or the unclarity and unpredictability of legislation are all manifest violations of the formal understanding of the rule of law. There is significant potential in this approach that we believe the EU institutions have not exploited fully.

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