In Hungary, the Law Changes Every Day but It Doesn’t Get Better
The EU Commission has agreed with us that the laws that we have analyzed in our series of four blogposts did not in fact constitute an effective anti-corruption plan. And the Commission has attached a €13.3 billion price tag to non-compliance. Now the Hungarian government is scrambling to unlock this cash by introducing two additional laws that attempt to address the Commission’s concerns. But these new laws repeat the errors of the prior laws. They create the appearance of an independent corruption-fighting system while digging in political allies at all of the chokepoints and tying up whistleblowers and anti-corruption fighters in red tape. The new laws do not make things better and they may even make things worse.
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The Sanctity of Preliminary References
A national supreme court must not declare a request for a preliminary ruling by a lower court unlawful on the ground that the referred questions are irrelevant and unnecessary for the original case. This has been held by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in its important decision C-564/19 IS. In addition, the CJEU held that EU law also precludes disciplinary proceedings from being brought against national judges on the ground that they made a reference for a preliminary ruling. The case also raises important questions to what extent preliminary rulings can be effective against rule-of-law decline and make up for political EU institutions’ failure to use adequate EU tools of supervision and enforcement.
Continue reading >>From Russia with Love
On 15 June, the Hungarian Parliament is expected to vote on a legislative package on stricter actions against paedophile offenders. Attached to this noble cause, the ruling party seeks to prohibit the “representation” and “promotion” of LGBTI identities to minors. The proposal would outlaw almost any mention of sexual and gender minorities in schools.
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