Registration Procedures “Reloaded”, or a Progress Report about the Effective Regulation on the Registration of Civil Society Organizations

Abstract

Since June 2017, the Hungarian regulation on the registration of NGOs has become one of the instruments of the “rule of law duel” between the European Commission and Hungary. In July 2017, the Commission opened infringement proceedings against Hungary under Article 63 TFEU and articles 7, 8, and 12 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Moreover, in its 2020 Rule of Law Report, the Commission expressed serious criticisms about constructive engagement with civil society organizations in Hungary. The new Civil Code harmonized the general rules on the operation, management, and supervision of civil society organizations with the provisions applicable to companies.1 In recent years, several (mostly critical) comments have been made in the legal literature on the promotion of dispositive regulation. Based on the above, the aim of the present study is to explore the existing legislation on the registration of NGOs, in the framework of which the legal status of NGOs will be clarified, and the related regulations of recent years – namely, Act CLXXXI of 2011 on the court registration of NGOs and the related procedural rules and Act CLXXV of 2011 on the freedom of association, non-profit status, and the operation and support of civil organizations – will be analysed.