A DK politician said Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had been "holding back information" about what justified certain restrictions ever since the start of the epidemic.Continue reading
In view of the war in Ukraine, the government will propose expanding the types of special legal orders enshrined in the constitution, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff said on Thursday.
The ‘state of danger’ introduced as a result of the coronavirus epidemic will end on May 31, Gergely Gulyás announced at a regular press conference.
In view of the war in Ukraine, it is important that the government should be able to take swift action when necessary and it will propose expanding the status of special legal order to include humanitarian catastrophe and war in a neighboring country, he said.
This option will hopefully not need to be used, but the possibility needs to be there, Gulyás said.
Hungary will continue making every effort to restore peace as soon as possible, but as Gulyás stressed, its influence is limited. According to Gulyás, it is a realistic scenario that the war could last for months or even years, and the movement of troops shows that the fights could intensify for periods of time.
“The end of the war is not in sight,” he said.
The Hungarian government declared a state of danger – a special legal order under the Hungarian Constitution- first in March 2020 via a government decree in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
A state of danger allows the government to introduce extraordinary legal measures by decree and suspend the application of certain laws. Many critics of the government slammed the legal situation created by the state of danger. According to them, this in addition to the fact that governing Fidesz alone has a supermajority in the parliament, practically allows the government to rule by decree for an indefinite period.
Additionally, another special legal order remains in effect in Hungary. The so-called “state of crisis due to mass migration” introduced in 2016 and extended numerous times throughout the past years also grants several extraordinary legal measures to the government. This is despite the fact that Hungary’s borders have largely been sealed to migrants since Europe’s 2015 migration crisis.
The constitutional amendment just announced will therefore again grant the government several special legal measures and very wide room for legal maneuvering.
Featured photo by Szilárd Koszticsák/MTI