Office of the commissioner for fundamental rights of hungary

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.

Several clauses of the smog decree of the municipality of Miskolc in the North East of Hungary are contrary to the laws. In case of a smog alert, they jeopardize the right to health and the right to a healthy environment. The Commissioner for Fundamental Rights initiated that the Curia of Hungary annul the offending provisions.

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.

After the presentation of the Justitia Regnorum Fundamentum Awards (The Ombudsman Award) on 15th June, 2012, an exhibition of human rights posters, organised jointly with the UN Association of Hungary, was opened in the building of the Ombudsman's office in Nádor Street. Numerous international organisations contributed to the success of the exhibition, among others the European Ombudsman, EOI, the Council of Europe, FENTSA, UNHCR and UNICEF.

The Commissioner for Fundamental Rights presented the Justitia Regnorum Fundamentum Awards on 15 June 2012, in Budapest. This year the following persons were recognised for their activities: university professor Csilla Kollonay-Lehoczky, environment protection lawyer György Kalas, and Judit Berki, expert in social policy, jointly with the After School Centre of Bátonyterenye directed by her.

Prof. Máté Szabó has requested the Constitutional Court to annul several provisions of rules of law because in his view they violate the right to the protection of personal data or the right to access data of public interest.

The special children's home in Fót reminds the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights of a law enforcement institution. On the basis of the on-the-spot inquiry and those laid down in the institution's documents Máté Szabó has found that in the institution, which cares for children with psychological problems, measures restricting liberty of the person are applied even in the absence of dangerous conduct as defined in the Child Protection Act.

According to the views of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Civil Rights, the new regulation (the Act on the shaping and protection of built environment, 2010) enables the use of boarder police actions on public places against homeless people - thus criminalizing the homeless people – cannot match the Hungarian constitutional and the European human rights norms.

The receipt of royalty by a convict is prohibited by a legal provision if the convict's work is related to the crime committed by him or her. The Commissioner for Fundamental Rights asked the Constitutional Court to annul the provision in its present form.