Office of the commissioner for fundamental rights of hungary

During one of his earlier, comprehensive investigations the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights concluded that various institutions of higher education and their faculties, in particular, did not have a uniform practice as far as the enforcement of the rights of students living with disability was concerned. Therefore, he requested the Minister of Human Resources to take the necessary measures in order to create an unambiguous legal environment. The State Secretary in charge of higher education partly concurred with and partly disputed the findings of Máté Szabó.

According to the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights, it is contrary to the requirement of the rule of law and infringes on the right to due process that the Media Act, in addition to imposing fines on organizations impeding the proceedings of the Media Authority, also stipulates, in case of repeated offence, imposing fines on the executive officer of the infringer. Therefore, Máté Szabó has requested the Constitutional Court to annul the provision concerned.

According to the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights, certain parts of the Fourth Amendment may not fulfil the formal and procedural criteria that are stipulated in the Basic Law. Therefore, upon the authorisation of the Basic Law, the ombudsman challenges the regulations in question at the Constitutional Court.

The authorities participating in handling the extreme snow situation, together with the voluntary rescue teams and civilians, carried out their rescue activities with the best possible utilization of both personnel and equipment. There were, however, some serious shortcomings in the course of preparing, alerting and informing the population, and in communications, too – concluded Ombudsman Máté Szabó summing up his ex officio investigation.

The termination or suspension for an extended period of air sampling at certain parts of the air monitoring network by the state jeopardize the right to a healthy environment and access to public information.

The Commissioner for Fundamental Rights proposes that the Minister of Rural Development review legislation as several complaints have been made saying that agricultural land under nature conservation may not be cultivated while there has been no expropriation in compliance with the Act and the proprietors have not received any consideration for their lands.

National security may be a legitimate excuse for curbing one's privacy, so national security inspection in itself does not constitute an infringement of one's right to privacy. On the other hand, the shortcomings of the Act on the National Security Services may endanger privacy, equality before the law and the right to fair procedure, stated the Ombudsman.

The Commissioner for Fundamental Rights provided his opinion ex-officio on the new rule of the draft bill on national security control. According to Máté Szabó, the private sphere of the individual should be respected during the security screening; moreover, the requirements of necessity and proportionality founded in the Basic Law should be also applied.

According to the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights, the course of action of the Media Support and Asset Management Fund (MTVA) has infringed upon the principle of the rule of law and the requirement of legal certainty when offering job opportunities to its former employees within the frameworks of a public works programme. The legislation's failure to adequately regulate the legal background of public works constitutes an infringement of fundamental rights, as well.

The Commissioner for Fundamental Rights concluded in his inquiry that a documentary is incompatible with the principle of human dignity if it suggests either in its asking questions or in its conclusions explicitly or implicitly that there may be a connection between the ethnic origin of the perpetrators and their criminal lifestyle.

According to the victim's description, the perpetrator of the criminal offence was a 50-60 year old man with greying hair and his wife. On this basis, police issued an arrest warrant for a 34 year old man and his wife. The complainants were later detained and then their pre-trial detention was ordered. The court of second instance released them from there. Police escorted them again after they had been released, as they failed to revoke the arrest warrant that they had issued previously. The ombudsman established the infringement of the fundamental right to personal freedom.

Back in November 2012 the Constitutional Court annulled a legal provision according to which local governments could define themselves locally punishable anti-social behaviour. As a result, the amendment of Act CLXXXIX of 2011 on Hungary's Local Governments (LGA), effective as of 1 January 2013, entitles local governments to set widely interpretable rules of communal coexistence instead of defining the criteria of anti-social behaviour. Commenting on a complaint, Commissioner for Fundamental Rights Máté Szabó emphasized the requirement of legal security.