Az állami és nemzeti jelképek büntetőjogi védelme Európában

Abstract

Aim: The aim of this study is to find out whether European countries protect their state and/or national symbols at the level of criminal law, whether they punish those who desecrate state symbols and, if so, exactly which symbols are protected. The answer to this question will also help us to understand the deeper question of which European countries consider state (and national) symbols to be of such value that various types of violations of them are punishable by criminal penalties as a last resort. Methodology: In order to establish this, we compared the criminal law of all European countries in which criminal offences are covered by a criminal code that functions as a separate penal code. For methodological soundness, countries without a separate Penal Code (and thus without a cartel constitution) (such as the United Kingdom) were excluded from the analysis, but all other European countries that are geographically (or if not geographically, such as Cyprus or Armenia, then culturally) part of Europe were examined. Findings: The results of the research disproved our initial hypothesis: the comparative study showed that the vast majority of European countries, more than 70%, protect their state (or national) symbols in some way, with a small minority of countries where there is no criminal law protection for the strict infringement of symbols. Value: This is also worthy of attention in the broader context of resolving the conflict in Europe between freedom of expression as a human and constitutional right and the constitutional value of what we call "the dignity of communities": in fact, the Europe of the 21st century (including the Western countries) has not yet departed from its community foundations and not only declares at constitutional level the symbols expressing the statehood and national identity of the nation that constitutes the state, but also (for the most part) protects them under criminal law.