At the invitation of the U.S. State Department, Márta Pardavi, co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, Stefánia Kapronczay managing director of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, and Sándor Léderer, director of K-Monitor met with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Special attention was paid to the situation of civil society, as well as to concerns regarding the rule of law in Hungary.
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The Hungarian Government proposes to establish a new administrative court system. There are no professional reasons behind setting up a new administrative court system and the government has also failed to provide any professional arguments. The decisions on the new court system are made behind closed doors which violates the public’s right to know.
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The Hungarian government is moving fast to breach the red lines drawn by the EP to complete its illiberal state. The joint paper of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, Amnesty International Hungary, and the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union summarizes the developments related to the rule of law in Hungary between September 2018 and January 2019.
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The independence of courts is threatened in Hungary. In 2019, a complete redesign of administrative courts is carried out to set up special courts to deal with high-profile cases from taxation to environmental protection to competition to freedom of assembly and asylum cases. On this page, you can find the analyses, opinions and records of activities of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee on the unfolding change of the court system.
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When we turn to the European Court of Human Rights, generally we try to draw attention to those structural problems which are not or cannot be remedied by the Hungarian authorities and courts: dismissal of public officials without justification, inhuman circumstances of detention, or unreasonable deprivation of one’s personal freedom.
We provide free legal assistance to asylum seekers, stateless persons and unaccompanied minors in Hungary. Reuniting separated families is one of our main objectives. Through our training and research activities, we foster a high-quality, effective and humane asylum procedure – both inside Hungary and in other parts of the world. We combat xenophobia.
We aim at decreasing the defenceless of people: we provide support to those in contact with the police and the penitentiary system, and we provide legal advice and representation to victims of ill-treatment by official persons or other severe abuses. In addition, we regularly monitor prisons and other places of detention in order to make closed institutions more transparent.
People are free in a state where the consequences of their actions are predictable and where clean and transparent rules apply not only to the individuals, but also to state authorities. Where the state power has no clear limits, there is no individual freedom either. It is important for us that the Hungarian democracy operates on the basis of the rule of law – that is why we step up in its defence.
Everybody should be treated equally; however, we still experience discrimination at many areas of life. For example, members of minorities can be victims of hate crime. We primarily provide legal aid for detainees and asylum seekers fighting against discrimination.