Hungary - Government
Hungary is located in the heart of the Carpathian Basin. The country’s area is 93 036 km2, and its population is 9 998 000. Hungary’s public administrative regional units comprise the capital city and nineteen counties. Budapest comprises twenty-three districts. There are 3152 cities, towns and smaller communities in Hungary.
Between 1956 and 1989 Hungarians lived through a period of state socialism associated with the name of Party Secretary János Kádár. Towards the end of the 1980s, however, from within society there welled up a solidarity which was strong enough to topple the system, yet peacefully and without resort to violence. Thus, on 23 October 1989, Hungary’s Third Republic was proclaimed – the date was symbolic, as this marked the anniversary of the outbreak of the 1956 Revolution. (The First Republic had been formed in 1918, and the Second Republic in 1946.) The Third Republic has broken with the cultural and ideological tenets of the one-party state, and operates according to the principles of democracy and a market economy – the main characteristic of which is the precedence of private property over state property.
The form of the state refers to the source of power. Hungary is a republic, which means that power derives from the people. The form of Hungary’s government is parliamentary, which means that the people exercises power through elected members of Parliament (this is also known as the principle of popular sovereignty).
Hungary functions according to democratic principles, and this is reflected in the relationship between the branches of government: the three main branches of government (the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary) operate independently of each other. The separation of powers does not allow any one of these branches to appropriate power and arbitrarily dictate the life of the country and its citizens, as in addition to the branches operating independently, they monitor each others’ activities. This is known as a system of ‘checks and balances’. The president of the republic has a largely ceremonial role, but powers also include appointing the prime minister. The President of the Republic is the head of the state, elected by Parliament for a term of five years. The President may, but need not, be elected from the members of Parliament (but cannot be both President and a member of Parliament at the same time). The President may only be re-elected once. The President's authority is limited. Most of the actions taken by the President require the countersignature of the Prime Minister or the appropriate minister.
The Government is the most important organ of executive power, and the chief director of public administration. This means that it implements decisions made by Parliament, as the legislative organ, and it pursues realisation of the goals laid out in the Government’s programme. The Hungarian Government comprises the Prime Minister and government ministers. The Prime Minister is the head of the Government. The prime minister selects cabinet ministers and has the exclusive right to dismiss them. Each cabinet nominee appears before one or more parliamentary committees in consultative open hearings and must be formally approved by the president.
Public administration operates efficiently when policy and traditional public administration tasks are handled separately. This is also reflected in the new structure of public administration: a minister of state deputises for a minister, with full delegated ministerial powers for a given area; meanwhile a minister directs the work of ministers of state. With the creation of a few key ministries, a minister directs several specialist departments: for example one minister is responsible for education, sport and healthcare, and so ministers of state have important roles in the direction of their respective specialist areas.
Ministers of state can be divided into three categories: ministers of state responsible for specialist areas (e.g. education); public administration ministers of state; and parliamentary ministers of state. Ministers of state responsible for specialist areas are political leaders, while the posts of public administration and parliamentary ministers of state are politically neutral, as are is the post of Deputy Minister of State. A public administration minister of state is a specialist leader of a ministry’s organisational operations, while the responsibilities of a parliamentary minister of state relate to liaison with Parliament.
The unicameral, 386-member National Assembly was the highest state authority body and initiates and approves legislation sponsored by the prime minister. A party must win at least 5% of the national vote to form a parliamentary faction. In Hungary parliamentary elections are held every four years. In accordance with the Constitution, parliamentary elections must be held in April or May of the fourth year after the election of the current parliament. The President of the Republic announces the date of the first round of elections, guided by the proviso that elections may not fall on a national holiday.
The Hungarian parliamentary electoral system is a composite one, in which representatives are elected to Parliament via three routes (via single-seat local constituencies, regional party lists and national party lists). Every voter has two votes: one may be cast for a candidate in the voter’s single-seat local constituency, and the other may be cast for a party’s list in a multi-seat regional constituency (the regional constituencies are the nineteen counties plus Budapest). Votes for losing candidates in single-seat local constituencies and multi-seat regional constituencies are automatically transferred to the national list in order to maximise the value of each individual vote and to counterbalance some of the loss sustained by losing parties. For this reason the essence of the national or ‘compensation’ list is that it does not tend to provide a winning party or parties with many seats, but compensates those parties with lower overall support.
There were no government restrictions on political parties. But the Hungarian parliamentary electoral system strictly regulates conditions for the nomination of parliamentary candidates, the composition of party lists and entry to Parliament. A regional list can only be compiled by a party which has candidates in at least a quarter of the single-seat local constituencies within the multi-seat regional constituency in question (but in at least two local constituencies). A national list may be compiled by any party which has successfully compiled at least seven regional lists. For a party to win seats through its lists, that party must have received votes for its regional lists equivalent to at least five per cent of the total number of valid votes cast nationwide. All these regulations assist in preventing the fragmentation of the party system and in ensuring that only parties with sufficient nationwide support can enter Parliament.
In single-seat local constituencies, candidates are usually elected over the course of two rounds. In the first round, in every constituency it is established whether or not the ballot was valid and whether or not it was conclusive. The validity of a ballot is determined by how many votes have been cast overall, and whether it is conclusive or not is determined by how many votes a candidate needs in order to win. A ballot is valid in a particular constituency if more than half of the electorates in that constituency vote. If fewer than half of registered voters have participated, then the round in that constituency is declared invalid, and a new round must be held. The new round will be valid if at least a quarter of registered voters take part.
If the first round in a constituency is declared valid, it must then be determined if it was conclusive or not. For the first round to be conclusive, one of the candidates must have received more than half the votes cast: a so-called ‘absolute majority’. In this eventuality there is no second round, and the candidate with more than 50% of the votes cast enters Parliament. The first round is inconclusive if none of the candidates has received more than half the votes cast in that round. In this case a second round will be held. In the second round all candidates who received at least fifteen per cent of the valid votes or at least the three candidates receiving the most votes in the first round can stand again.
The Hungarian judiciary consists of the Supreme Court, the county courts, the Metropolitan Court of Budapest and the local and labor courts. Legislation may provide for special courts to be convened for certain types of cases. Three Courts of Appeal located in Budapest, Pecs and Szeged were established with regional jurisdiction from July 1, 2003 and began their operations at that time. Two further Courts of Appeal were established in July 2004 and started operation in 2005. The Supreme Court sets guidelines for the judicial process of every court. Resolutions concerning uniformity are binding on all courts. Judges are independent and are subordinate only to the law. Local courts have original jurisdiction. The Courts of Appeal, the county courts and the Metropolitan Court of Budapest have both appellate and original jurisdiction.
The President of the Republic nominates and Parliament elects the President of the Supreme Court. The President of the Supreme Court nominates and the President of the Republic appoints the Vice-Presidents of the Supreme Court. The President of the Republic also appoints and removes professional (non-arbitration) judges. The President of the Republic may only remove professional judges for cause using procedures prescribed by law.
The Constitutional Court is separate from the regular Hungarian judiciary. It decides on the constitutionality of legislation and other actions as set forth in the Hungarian Constitution. The Constitutional Court may annul any law or legal measure that it determines as unconstitutional. Any person may initiate proceedings in the Constitutional Court to address issues within its jurisdiction. Parliament elects the eleven members of the Constitutional Court. Justices of the Constitutional Court serve for nine-year terms.
Since 1 January 2013, citizens and human rights groups no longer have the right to petition the Constitutional Court to review the constitutionality of legal norms. Under the new Constitution, only the Government, one quarter of the members of Parliament and the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights have the right to initiate such proceedings. It seems that the new rules regarding the Constitutional Court have weakend the system of checks and balances and constitutional protection.
The conservative Fidesz-Christian Democrat coalition won a two-thirds parliamentary majority. Fidesz’s prime ministerial candidate, Viktor Orban, took office in 2010. The government continued to use its two-thirds parliamentary majority to implement constitutional reform. It adopted the Fourth and the Fifth Amendments to the Fundamental Law (constitution). The European Parliament (EP) expressed concern that the process of introducing the Constitution “lacked the transparency, openness, inclusiveness and, ultimately, the consensual basis that could be expected in a modern democratic constituent process, thus weakening the legitimacy of the Fundamental Law itself.”
The Fourth Amendment in particular attracted intense international criticism and further reinforced concerns that checks and balances were eroding. Human rights NGOs stressed that political liberties and their guarantees have been subject to systematic curtailment since 2010 and that the Fourth Amendment was a new component of this process.
The Fifth Amendment partially responded to international criticism, but concerns remained that provisions contained in the new legislation could undermine equal treatment of religious groups and media pluralism. The 2013 fifth amendment to the Constitution includes tweaking of rules on election campaigning, religious freedom and the independence of the judiciary, among others. The amendment also upholds the President’s right to reassign cases to a different court – a provision that was previously adopted as a transitional measure and was subsequently struck down as unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court.
The new constitution adopted April 18, 2011 entered into effect January 1, 2012. National Assembly elected in April 2010 amended the constitution to reduce the maximum number of MPs after the 2014 general elections from 386 to 199 [or 200?], cutting roughly by half the number of local representatives, and to extend citizenship rights to ethnic Hungarians living beyond the country's present borders. A 15-member Constitutional Court has power to challenge legislation on grounds of unconstitutionality. From January 1, 2012, the Constitutional Court had 15 members, appointed by a two-thirds vote in Parliament for a 12-year term of office.
The electoral system applied in the period from 1990 to 2010 was a result of a negotiated transition, in which the interests of the old and the new political elite were reconciled in the creation of a mixed system. While a mixed electoral system is retained, the number of parliamentary seats was decreased from 386 to 199 and the method of seat allocation was modified. Out of 199 seats, 106 are elected through majoritarian contests from single-member constituencies; there is no longer a second round requirement. The remaining 93 seats are elected through a nationwide proportional system provided that a party passes a threshold of 5 per cent, 10 per cent in case of a joint party list, and 15 per cent if more than two parties form a joint list.
In addition, the superfluous votes from the single-member constituencies are allocated to the proportional contest as a means to assign compensatory seats. The five per cent threshold is not applicable for national minority lists; they are entitled to at least one seat provided they secure at least one fourth of the electoral Hare’s quota. In case a national minority list fails to win a mandate, they are entitled to a non-voting parliamentary spokesperson.
Among other changes, the new constitution stipulates that the country’s official name is to be Hungary (rather than Republic of Hungary), makes reference to the role of Christianity in “preserving the nation,” and sets the term of local government members at 5 years. Additionally, it spells out a list of several dozen laws whose modification will require a two-thirds majority in Parliament in the future. The government has announced that a new electoral law will grant voting rights to ethnic Hungarians living beyond the country’s borders.
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