"It would be wrong to judge sovereign states and their political communities by abstract and external concepts of rule of law, since they can vary from country to country, embedded in a national heritage," Trócsányi said.Continue reading
Tamás Sulyok, the president of Hungary’s Constitutional Court, on Tuesday published an open letter in response to growing political “perceptions” that Hungary’s basic law could be “annulled with the stroke of a pen” and the court dissolved in the event of a change of government after next spring’s general election.
The views voiced by certain political parties and supported by the intellectual spheres that sympathize with them can be considered “direct and serious attacks on the rule of law and democracy and as such are completely unacceptable in a democracy governed by the rule of law”, Sulyok wrote in the letter, published on the court’s website, addressed to President János Áder, House Speaker László Kövér, and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Constitutional courts, as the bodies meant to safeguard the sound functioning of the legal system, are tasked with ensuring that the actions of the branches of power are in line with the provisions of the constitution, he wrote. Like other European constitutional courts, the Hungarian court is a body that in European democracies is generally seen as the guarantee of the constitutional and democratic functioning of the state, he added.
“The Constitutional Court exercises constitutional control over all branches of power but the legislative and executive branches are obligated to ensure its sound functioning together,” Sulyok wrote.
Featured photo by Szilárd Koszticsák/MTI