Rule without law in Hungary : the decade of abusive permanent state of exception

Abstract

Since the Fidesz-KDNP coalition’s success at the elections in Hungary in 2010, democracy and democratic tolerance have been used for their own destruction. There are many aspects of this process; this article focuses mainly on states of emergency used by the government in previous years, which represents the current government’s attitude towards the rule of law. In the ‘decade of abusive permanent state of exception’ the Hungarian Government became the enemy of constitutional democracy, instead of protecting the values of constitutionalism, a process that has already been well-described in the constitutional law literature over the past few years. This article tries to show that autocratic legalism – a term widely accepted to describe the public law situation in the country – is no longer the best definition to describe the regime.