The New Hungarian Constitution: Legal Critiques from Europe

Abstract

Hungarian constitutional and legislative reforms have been in the spotlight since Hungary’s adoption of a new Fundamental Law, which entered into force on the first day of 2012. Europe’s two leading international organizations (the Council of Europe and the European Union) already issued an opinion about it the year before its entry into force, and they continued to closely follow Hungarian constitutional developments during ensuing years. The new Fundamental Law was followed by a series of new ‘cardinal laws’ and many controversial reforms. This article presents and discusses the opinions delivered by the Venice Commission, the European Court of Human Rights, and the eu institutions on these reforms and the different types of arguments on which they relied. This article also aims to present the interaction between the Hungarian government and Europe’s two leading organizations concerning the new constitutional setting of Hungary, focusing on the legal arguments in each case.