Hungary seeks to dispel concerns, but sows seeds of daunting future

Shortly before midnight on Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén (KDNP) submitted to Parliament the Bill on Terminating the State of Danger (T/10747) and the Bill on Transitional Provisions related to the Termination of the State of Danger (T/10748).

The government hails the Bills as allaying the fears of those who had warned about the dangers of government rule-by-decree powers. However, the proposals are unsuitable to dispel these fears. On the contrary: they shed a harsh light on the true nature of the regime

, the civil organisations said in a joint statement.

It's not Parliament with a government, but the other way around

Bill T/10747 on Terminating the State of Danger does not terminate the state of danger, instead,

it very well illustrates that in Hungary, it’s not the parliament that has a government, rather the government has a parliament.

The proposal whereby the parliament has to call on the government to terminate the state of danger will be coming from the government itself.

Hence in fact the government will be making a request to itself after a short detour, and the Bill does not contain a deadline for when this request has to be made.

The government will be requested to end the special legal order at a time when it sees fit to do so.

This does not make too much sense, unless it’s meant to prove to a superficial observer that, in contrast to earlier critical remarks, the Authorisation Act did not do away with parliamentary oversight of the government. A more detailed reading of the Bill, however, reveals that it’s exactly the opposite case.

Key constitutional safeguard to be neutralised

The amendment of the Disaster Management Act, which transposes one of the most problematic provisions of the Authorisation Act, would do away with an important safeguard in the Fundamental Law.

The Fundamental Law wishes to maintain the balance of power between the branches of government by permitting the government to suspend and set aside laws, but only insofar and in such a manner as allowed by parliament in the Disaster Management Act.

Now, under a proposed amendment of the Disaster Management Act,

the government may order any measures it deems necessary if the measures previously specified by parliament are inadequate.

This renders futile the provision of the Fundamental Law that the government may only exercise powers under a special legal order in accordance with the provisions of cardinal laws:

from now on, cardinal laws will no longer restrict this power and will permit anything that the government deems necessary in the given circumstances.

"Little sister" to special legal order born

Bill T/10748 on the transitional provisions contains another provision that is not provisional at all: "by amending the rules of “state of medical emergency”, the Bill creates a “little sister” to the special legal order."

According to this amendment, in a state of medical emergency, the government may restrict by decree the exercise of essential fundamental rights, such as the freedom of movement or the freedom of assembly.

Restrictions may initially last for a period of six months but then may be extended practically indefinitely.

In practical terms, introducing as well as terminating this semi-special legal order, which is not regulated by the Fundamental Law, is entirely up to the government’s discretion. Furthermore, in the case of such decrees there is no guarantee that they would lapse after a certain period of time unless Parliament approves them (compared to decrees adopted in a special legal order).

Smoke and mirrors

In light of the above, it’s clear that those who have been sounding the alarm that the government can and will abuse the powers it gained in relation to managing the Covid-crisis were in fact right

, the organisations warn.

The also note that during the past two months, the government had adopted a series of decrees which had nothing to do with protection measures or that disproportionately restricted fundamental rights.

"The promise to revoke the Authorisation Act and to terminate the state of danger is nothing but an optical illusion:

if the Bills are adopted in their present form, that will allow the government to again rule by decree for an indefinite period of time, this time without even the minimal constitutional safeguards."

Decrees that have nothing to do with the coronavirus pandemic

In the dead of night, after Parliament passed “On protecting against the coronavirus” and President János Áder signed it into law after two hours of “hard constitutional scrutiny,” Deputy PM Zsolt Semjén submitted an omnibus bill, none of the proposed legislation of which had anything to do with the coronavirus pandemic.

The government took away crucial funding from opposition-led municipalities (about half of local cities have been controlled by the opposition since the 2019 municipal elections).

The government decided overnight that the Samsung factory in the town of Göd is a "special economic area," and as such, no longer under the jurisdiction of the opposition-led municipality. Due to this, Samsung no longer pays taxes to the city, which means Göd has just lost about a tenth of its budget.  

In mid-April, a swarm of soldiers, policemen, and lawyers descended upon the offices of Kartonpack Ltd., and the manager was told to go home. The publicly-traded company with both Hungarian and foreign shareholders was drawn under government control supposedly in order to contribute to the coronavirus response effort, but the government immediately fired the entire management, solving a long-running ownership dispute under the cover of the pandemic.

Hungarian business news site Mfor.hu gathered the government's sports-related expenditures that were approved since the introduction of the state of emergency, and including all tenders, developments, and investments, the final sum is nearly HUF 10 billion.

One of Semjén's proposals seeks to gift two high-value properties in Buda to a foundation lead by Mária Schmidt, an important stakeholder in Fidesz's memory politics.

41 state properties would be gifted to churches.

Another proposal would abolish the capital’s ban that halts yet-to-be-started developments in Városliget (City Park). The ban, proposed by Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony, is aimed at “preventing irreversible changes to the city’s largest public park” so that “it can continue in its function as a public park”. This was one of Karácsony's key promises in his campaign last year, and Orbán “generously” promised that the will of the Budapesters would be honoured. According to several opinion polls over the years, more than 75% of the inhabitants of the Hungarian capital are against the project. 

At the end of March, Parliament amended the Act on Culture in an accelerated procedure without any consultation whatsoever, according to which Minister of Human Capacities Miklós Kásler will become the immediate supervisor of the directors of all Budapest theatres jointly maintained by the city and the state.

A month later, public employees in the cultural sector - approximately 20 000 people - found out that their publicly employed status will soon be jeopardised by Semjén's omnibus bill. The new legislation has already been passed and it places them under Labour Code rules, giving employers greater freedom in terminating contracts and setting wages. 

Parliament passed (with 115 votes in favour,  35 against and 3 abstentions) a political resolution rejecting the ratification of the Istanbul Convention it signed in 2014 on the grounds that it promotes gender theory and migration. The Istanbul Convention is the first legally binding instrument dedicated to combating violence against women and a milestone in the history of women’s rights protection. It provides a definition of gender and gender-based violence and foresees, among others, the criminalisation of abuses such as the Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), marital rape, and forced marriage.

"We have a right to defend our country, our culture, our laws, traditions, and national values, which should not be threatened by either the gender theory that goes against the beliefs of the majority of the population or by immigration without bounds, or preferential immigration based on gender," said Christian Democrats (KDNP) caucus leader Lőrinc Nacsa.

The supermajority of the governing Fidesz-KDNP coalition has recently ended the legal recognition of transgender people in the country. Article 33 of the new legislation introduces the term "Sex at birth" defined as "the biological sex determined by primary sex characteristics and chromosomes" into the Civil Registry Act, replacing "gender" in the civil registry. The law passed by Parliament expressly forbids changing this entry, making it impossible to legally change one's gender in Hungary.

Since data in official documents such as ID cards, driving licenses, and passports are taken from the civil registry, the change would affect these as well, newly printed official documents would display sex at birth, an expert of administrative law speaking to Index clarified. Transgender people will not be able to register their chosen names, either. 

Another bill submitted by Semjén would hand a smaller fortune to the Mathias Corvinus Collegium - the institute operated by a foundation of András Tombor, a former advisor of PM Viktor Orbán, is about to get 10% of the government's portfolio of fuels group Mol and pharmaceutical producer Gedeon Richter stocks (81.9 million and 18.6 million shares respectively) and property that the MCC already uses, all free of charge.

Hungary's ruling coalition also adopted a bill that classifies the contracts of the cc. HUF 1 trillion Chinese-Hungarian rail link to be built between Budapest and Belgrade for ten years.