Continuity with deficiencies: the new Hungarian Basic Law

Abstract

On 18 April 2011 The Hungarian Parliament approved the country’s new Constitution, named the ‘Basic Law of Hungary’. Its transitory provisions were approved in a different act of the Parliament, on 30 December 2011. Both acts entered into force on 1 January 2012. The article’s main thesis is that most of the Basic Law’s content stems from the previous democratic liberal Constitution, but that the rhetoric has changed into a conservative Christian historicising one. There are, however, also some substantive deficiencies in the new Basic Law, such as the curtailing of the competences of the Constitutional Court, the dismissal of the Data Protection Commissioner and of the President of the Supreme Court, the ability of the head of the judicial administration and of the Chief Prosecutor to choose a court for any court proceeding, the possibility of a lifelong prison sentence and the exaggerated use of cardinal (organic) laws. These either breach general principles of constitutionalism, or European Union and international law obligations. Some of these deficiencies can be resolved by means of creative interpretation, if the Hungarian Constitutional Court accepts his task as the guardian of European Constitutional values.