Hungary to Reintroduce Historic Titles of Counties and Government Officials

Hungary’s governing Fidesz party has proposed to officially replace the titles Kormánymegbízott (government commissioner) and megye (county) with főispán (lord-lieutenant) and vármegye (castle-county), a return to the monarchic administrative designations used in Hungary before Soviet occupation. While opposition leaders have criticized the relevance and symbolic meaning of the bill in a modern context, pro-government and government outlets have cited the historic relevance of the titles.

Despite Hungary’s status as a parliamentary republic, the proposal to rename government commissioners and counties would mean a symbolic turn toward the administrative system established in Hungary in the early medieval period, which was in place until the Soviet Union occupied Hungary after the Second World War. According to Fidesz, the legal proposal stems from the potential “opportunity for today’s Hungarian public administration to be more closely linked to the system of the pre-communist Hungarian state administration.” The use of vármegye instead of simply megye¸ the party argues, “ensures the survival of the constitutional traditions established over a millennium of Hungarian statehood.”

Both titles have been presented on the foundation of connecting Hungary with its pre-communist past, providing the “aldermen” elected in London, England, as an example of medieval titles that are still in use today.

There is no obstacle for the change of titles not to be implemented into law, as the governing party holds a majority in the National Assembly. Opposition parties have accused Fidesz of diverting attention away from issues like inflation and the deteriorating value of the forint, with Budapest Mayor and opposition green party Párbeszéd co-leader Gergely Karácsony calling on Hungarians to think about the underlying symbolism the returning titles would have in a democracy. “We should think through the message the government is trying to send by requiring government commissioners to be called [főispán].”

The conservative pro-government Center for Fundamental Rights (Alapjogokért Központ) has argued that the title of vármegye, directly translated to castle-county, is a symbol of Hungarian sovereignty. The research institute posted a list of arguments to its Facebook page supporting the decision. They write:

• Castle-counties can be traced back to the rule of Saint Stephen, they gained their most distinctive legal and political powers during the reign of the Hunyadi family and then the Jagiellonian kings. During the reform era they were the “cradle of civil-national culture.”
• One of the April Laws, introduced by the revolutionary government of 1848, specified that castle-counties were “the bastions of the constitutionality in Hungary and its connected parts.” “It is no coincidence,” the institute writes, “that during the neo-absolutist Austrian rule following the defeat of Hungary’s revolution and war of independence, the counties represented continued Hungarian resistance to the Habsburgs.”
• Following the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1868, castle-counties were not only important for nation-building, but also helped shape local identities. For example, the institute states, Szepes, Abaúj-Torna and the castle-counties in the southern parts of the Great Hungarian Plain were especially active in writing their history and representing local cultures.
• The Hungarian People’s Republic removed the castle-county system in 1949, and the dictatorship that followed “abolished Hungary’s constitutional system and real independence for a long period of time.”

Thus, the institute argues, there is no other goal to the current proposal than “the re-establishment of the traditions adhering to Hungarian statehood, independence, and national freedom in our legal system.”

Featured photo illustration by Edit Kátai/MTI