EUR;CoE;EU;CECC;JCCJ;WCCJa) Hungary / b) Constitutional Court / c) / d) 30-06-1995 / e) 42/1995 / f) / g) Magyar Közlöny (Official Gazette), 56/1995 / h) .
Keywords of the systematic thesaurus:
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General Principles - Certainty of the law.
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General Principles - Publication of laws.
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Institutions - Legislative bodies - Law-making procedure.
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Keywords of the alphabetical index:
Headnotes:
Deficiencies in the drafting or editing of a law are not sufficient reason for the annulment of that law. The Constitutional Court may annul a law only on the grounds that it is unconstitutional. If a contested Act is not contrary to any provision of the Constitution, it is not legally possible to annul it.
Summary:
The government's austerity plan passed by the legislature as Act 48 of 1995 on the Amendment of Certain Laws to promote Economic Stabilisation is a loose set of amendments to laws. The Act, indeed, made amendments to a significant number of laws, some of which were substantial whereas others only affected a single provision. Frequently, the amendments had no substantial interrelation with one another. Nevertheless, these facts were not contrary to any specific provision of the Constitution.
The Constitutional Court emphatically pointed out that constitutionality also includes the requirement that various bodies operate efficiently (including Parliament, inter alia), something which is inconceivable without a rational system of legal editing and drafting. In the interests of legal certainty and voluntary observance of the law, the valid text of the amended legal regulations must be uniformly published as soon as possible.
Supplementary information:
The government introduced an austerity package affecting a series of laws with a view to economic stabilisation. The Court unanimously, in this and in four consequent decisions, struck down critical sections of the austerity plan.
Hungarian.