States of emergency in Hungary

Abstract

A state of danger, as declared in Hungary in March 2020, is one of the six special legal orders that the Fundamental Law contains in the part on Special Legal Orders. In this emergency situation, the government is authorised to rule by decrees that have the force of a legislative act. Although the emergency decrees should be narrowly tailored to the danger they were designed to combat, and temporary in nature, the extraordinary authorisation of the government now seems to be permanent, as the state of danger has been extended three times to date, the last time because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This chapter first discusses the legal regulation of special legal orders and its changes. Then, it analyses the legal consequences of the respective states of danger and describes how the quasi-special legal order appeared at the sub-constitutional level of the legal system. The chapter also examines whether emergency legislation has remained within the scope of the authorisation and examines the relationship between ordinary and extraordinary law-making. Finally, the last part of the chapter attempts to identify the reasons for the specific constitutional treatment and consequences of the state of emergency in Hungary.