Hungarian Conservative

Earlier this year, the EU reached a preliminary agreement with Hungary regarding judicial reforms, outlining specific milestones that the Orbán government must fulfil to access funds.

Mária Ádám-Haszonics, Zoltán Lomnici, András Patyi, and Réka Varga have all been confirmed to the Constitutional Court by a two-thirds majority vote in the parliament, replacing the four term-limited former justices on the 15-member panel. The Court has the power to strike down legislation if they find it incompatible with the Fundamental Law of Hungary.

‘In contrast to other indicators, the Hungarian judiciary performs below the European Union average in terms of the perception of its independence. Based on this, we might state that the rule of law conditionality procedure launched against our country is justified. However, the validity of this argument is undermined by the fact that there are no criteria in this area either in which Hungary would not be ahead of several other Member States. For example, the Spanish, Slovak, Bulgarian, Polish, and Croatian public have a worse opinion of the independence of their country’s judiciary than the Hungarian.’

At a conference on Monday, Justice Minister Judit Varga assured everyone that the separation between the judiciary and executive power is enshrined in law in Hungary. She also opined that the current ‘crisis of confidence’ between Hungary and the EU is caused by the continuous unjustified attacks on the country over the years, and not the supposed faults in Hungary’s justice system.

The focus of Anna Loutfi’s talk at Danube Institute was the category of philosophical belief in UK equality law and its implications for general freedom of expression under common law and ECHR regimes. Dr Loutfi’s discussion explored how the case law evolution has gradually eroded the space for questioning and debating what are essentially deeply held opinions.

PiS General Secretary Krzysztof Sobolewski warned that if ‘the Commission tries to push us against the wall…we have no choice but to pull out all the weapons in our arsenal and respond…eye for an eye’, including by wielding the right to veto EU policies.