New ways to legally define Lake Balaton
On April 24, 2018, the Ombudsman for Future Generations, together with the Public Law Section of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences organized a workshop titled „New opportunities for legal definition of Lake Balaton in the light of the legal entity of Whanganui River in New Zealand”. The purpose of the workshop was to find new ways and new tools for the use of natural resources, while at the same time respecting the operation of ecosystems.
For this purpose, a new law adopted in New Zealand in 2017 could serve as a good model. This law gave the Whanganui River legal entity. In Hungary, following the New Zealand pattern, the possibility of qualifying the Balaton as a legal entity was raised on a civil initiative.
A number of theoretical questions which are all necessary to clarify the feasibility of the Balaton legal entity concept were discussed on the workshop.
The materials of the workshop (New Zealand law, initiative on Lake Balaton, study of the New Zealand law from the point of view of Hungarian law) can be found on the following links:
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2017/0007/latest/whole.html
http://www.hirbalaton.hu/balatoni-kor-onallo-jogalanyi-statuszt-a-balatonnak
http://xn--vdegylet-b1a.hu/balaton