Orbán cabinet to submit constitutional amendments today

The justice minister has said the government will submit the seventh amendment to the constitution on Tuesday. The changes will affect ten articles covering three areas.

László Trócsányi told MTI on Tuesday that some of the provisions had been debated in parliament in the autumn of 2016 but the opposition had withheld its support, denying the government the two-thirds needed for approval of the changes. Now the government has the necessary supermajority.

The first issue concerns protecting Hungary’s constitutional identity and the issue of asylum.

Europe and Hungary, he said, face new challenges that justify “strengthening our national sovereignty”. State bodies, in accordance with Constitutional Court decisions, will be obliged to protect the country’s constitutional identity, he said.

In a European Union context, the exercise of fundamental rights and freedoms should fall in line with Hungary’s constitution, the minister said. Accordingly, no restrictions may be placed on Hungary’s rights in connection with its territorial unity, population or the form and structure of the state.

In connection with illegal immigration, Trócsányi said “the mass introduction of a foreign population is declared forbidden”. “The amendment reinforces the principle of international law that the state has the right to determine who can live within its territory,” he added.

Another amendment states that

any non-Hungarian citizen who comes to Hungary through a country that poses no direct threat of persecution is not entitled to asylum,

he noted. The vast majority of asylum seekers and migrants arrive at Hungary’s borders via “safe countries”, where they do not even try to lodge an asylum application, he said in justification of the measure.

Meanwhile, on the subject of the justice system, Trócsányi said he had always given high priority to establishing organisational independence for the administrative courts. Around 70 years after the Hungarian Royal Administrative Court was abolished, an opportunity has arisen to set up an administrative high court with equal status to the Kúria, Hungary’s supreme court, he said, adding that this measure accorded with Hungarian traditions. He noted that the justice ministry was working on the legislative package to create an independent administrative court and this would be presented to the government.

Trócsányi said

another substantive amendment will affect the judiciary when it comes to interpreting the law, requiring the provision of more detailed legal guidance than is currently the case.

The third area involves firming up protections of private and family life and the home, taking into account trends of recent years such as digitisation, technological development and drones. He insisted that the planned provision accords with the rules in the constitutions of many other countries.

Photo: MTI

Source: MTI