The Hungarian environmental private law under the influence of jus publicum

Abstract

The relationship between environmental public law and environmental private law is of a growing significance. Not only environmental criminal law has an effect on environmental private law, but, since the beginning of the new legal, economic and political era in 1989, private law elements are also to be found in the environmental administrative law. The reciprocity between environmental private and administrative law is clear-cut. Private law institutions, like injunction or deposit, are upheld in environmental administrative contracts. The effect of an administrative ruling has legal consequences in the relationship between, e.g., neighbors: there are cases in which a noisy neighbor can be brought before the public administration. The objective liability in the field of environmental private law is accepted by the courts and by the citizens. The level of objectivity may, though, vary from country to country. In the practice of the Hungarian environmental private law, after 3 years, the objective liability is subrogated by a subjective liability, this latter one making exculpation easier. The res ipsa loquitur liability in space law is not an absolute liability, though it establishes a praesumptio juris that the environmental damage caused by a space object (e.g. a satellite) is to be covered by the state which has sent the satellite into space. The presumption is, though not easily, rebuttable. In the Hungarian case law, objective environmental liability has been applied sub judice since the novella of the Civil Code in 1977. This novella made environmental private law a part of environmental law. The novella of the Civil Code was preceded by the Act on Environmental Protection of1976. The importance of economics in environmental private law has only recently been accepted by the Hungarian legal science. The role of the Coase theory is indisputable. The environmental private law is quite a new phenomenon in the Hungarian legal science, however, the institution of neighborhood damage has been present in the Hungarian case law since the 19th century. The case law added two systems of sanctioning to the disposition of the neighborhood norm in the Hungarian Civil Code: the indemnity and the protection of possession.