Hungarian News

Law of the Ruler

• December 21, 2021
• István
• 10 Comments

The world became better place yesterday, the genius of the Carpathian Basin has enlightened the world with his newest oeuvre, szamidat 15 ►EN. Orbán wrote: “A homeland only exists where rights also exist.” Or as Bloomberg ►EN interpreted: “Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban indicated his government may defy a ruling of the European Court of Justice.”

What happened? The EU commission took Hungary to the European Court of Justice, because the Orbán government decided to keep asylum seekers in detention in so-called transit zones at the border to Serbia. The court ruled ►EN on December 17th, 2020 that the Hungarian law violated European law in several aspects and has ordered Hungary to end this practice and to apply valid EU law instead.

The Hungarian regime decided to close the detention facilities, but does not apply European law, which only grants very basic rights to refugees arriving at EU’s outer borders. Instead one got the possibility to apply for asylum ►HU in Hungarian embassies out of the EU territory only. According to HVG ►HU this possibility is practically reduced to the embassies in Kiev and Belgrade. While such a possibility to apply for special visa is not restricted by EU law, the limitation to such is not allowed, in fact it is a clear limitation of access to the fundamental right to apply for asylum. Further aspects as staying in Hungary during a possible appeal against a decision of the authorities were not met and illegal pushbacks remained allowed in Hungary. And how did Orbán react onto these facts? He tried to open another battle against the EU and his minister of Justice had to file a motion with the Hungarian constitutional court to overrule the European ruling.

This means the ruling of the ECJ is not fully obeyed. On November 12th, 2021 the European commission ►EN asked the court to convict the Hungarian government to pay a daily fine until Hungary fulfils its duties according to valid EU law.

Not long ago the constitutional tribunal of Poland ruled that some articles of the Treaty on the European Union are against the Polish constitution ►EN, although earlier rulings stated exactly the opposite. The rule that community law has primacy over national law, established in 1964, was declared invalid in Poland. From this arouse another heavy conflict between the Polish government and the EU. Orbán tried to get the same kind of backing from his own court.

But the Hungarian constitutional court decided not to decide. It didn’t rule which law has primacy, the EU law or the Hungarian law. The court published ►HU: “Based on the interpretation of the Europe clause of the basic law, the constitutional court stated that if exercising of joint competence with the Union is incomplete, Hungary in accordance with the presumption of reserved sovereignty is entitled to exercise non-exclusive Union competence during the time until the institutions of the European Union have taken the necessary measures to ensure the effective exercise of their joint competence.” And yes, it reads that great in Hungarian as well. After several times reading it says that Hungary may decide for the time being if competence is shared and the EU doesn’t decide about some aspects. In my humble opinion the ECJ would not see a problem in such a practice, just it doesn’t address the concrete case of the December 17th, 2020 ruling.

Although the court didn’t want to fight this battle for Orbán and the government lost this trial ►EN the regime sold it as full success: Gergely Gulyás summarised ►HU the decision of the Constitutional Court in 3 statements. The 1st is that Hungary, independently of the European Union, has the right to protect its borders from migration. The 2nd is that Hungary has an obligation to protect Hungarians from the harmful effects of migration. The 3rd is that the rules concerning Hungary’s systems about population and state order are a national competence and take primacy over all the EU rules. However, I did not find any reason for these claims, neither in the press information, nor in the full text of the ruling.

And yesterday it was the turn on Orbán to declare that the rules he made are the rules that must be obeyed. The man who is so much under fire for his violations of the rule-of-law tells the world that the law-of-the-ruler would create the homeland. He called the decision of the constitutional court “historical.” According to Orbán ►HU the constitutional court “put the human rights system back on its feet.” This is remarkable, because although it is said in the decision that the human rights developed differently in different societies, the court also decided that the level of human rights as determined in the basic law must not be undermined by the EU. But Orbán also claimed “Europeans have no right on their home country, their language, their culture, their family and their god” – only Hungarians are protected now….

Hard to believe that the European Court of Justice will be impressed, we will learn next year how high the daily fine will be.