Protecting Democracy and the Rule of Law in the European Union: The Hungarian Challenge

Abstract

The European Union is facing a unique historical situation: a political club of democratic regimes established primarily to prevent war and promote peace in post-World War II Europe is confronted with the first EU member state ever sliding into an authoritarian illiberal political regime. Namely, on April 25, 2011, the new Fundamental law was promulgated as the new Hungarian Before that, in the 2010 elections, Victor Orban's party Fidesz, won an overwhelming majority of seats in the Hungarian parliament. Shortly afterwards, with its two-thirds majority, it also adopted a new The major problem of the Hungarian new constitution is that it constitutionalized a deeply problematic illiberal political order, directly dismantling basic checks and balances and, according to Muller, consequently leading to a Putin-style guided democracy. Hence, the Hungarian new constitution undermines some of the basic principles of the EU political The article proceeds in three parts. In Section Two, it presents the new Hungarian unconstitutional constitution. This section offers a brief overview of the recent developments in the Hungarian constitutional law and argues that the new constitution indeed represents a direct threat to the values of modern liberal democracy as protected by the EU Section Three looks at the legal mechanism in EU law available to deal with the Hungarian case. Section Four looks at the political context of the Hungarian case, examines political repercussions of the political intervention against Hungary and concludes with a discussion of future prospects for development of the European political