The constitutional landscape after the fourth and fifth amendments of Hungarian Fundamental Law

Abstract

The essay analyses the fourth and fifth amendments of the Hungarian Fundamental Law with special respect to the opinion of the Venice Commission and the resolution of the European Parliament. It will be pointed out that the fourth amendment transferred several legal regulations into the Fundamental Law which were previously qualified as unconstitutional by the Hungarian Constitutional Court. The Fundamental Law contains at the same time the declaration of a fundamental right and the unconstitutional limitation of it by the latter regulation. The inconsistency is evident, therefore the Constitutional Court has to choose in the future between the contradictory constitutional regulations. A possibility to solve this dilemma could be the separation of the legal norms of the constitution as lex generalis (e.g. rule of law, human dignity) and lex specialis which could not derogate the lex generalis, and ca nnot be applied accordingly.