At a press conference in Budapest, held jointly with Minister of Interior Sándor Pintér, Minister of Justice László Trócsányi said that “The Government is preparing a new Act on freedom of assembly to correct the constitutional deficiencies determined on Tuesday by the Constitutional Court”.
“The Government accepts the Constitutional Court’s order to determine by the end of this year the criteria regulating conflicts between the fundamental rights to privacy and to freedom of assembly”, Mr. Trócsányi said, adding that when developing their proposals the Government will initiate a five-party discussion with parliamentary groups and will take into account the legal practice of the European Court of Human Rights, and the opinions of legal scholars and law enforcement experts.
The Minister stressed that the Government completely agrees with the Constitutional Court’s opinion that the right to freedom of assembly is a precondition and fundamental value of democracy. However, Mr. Trócsányi said, no one denies that there are problems with the practice of the right to assembly; these can be traced back to both deficiencies in regulation and difficulties in enforcing and interpreting the law. “It is perhaps no accident that in 2015 the Curia [Hungary’s supreme court] set up a group to analyse legal practices relating to the right to assembly”, he added, saying that recent increasingly frequent decisions by the Curia and the Constitutional Court on the right to assembly have been warning signs.
The Justice Minister pointed out that the current Act on freedom of assembly was adopted in 1989 by the last ever state socialist parliament. Since then the Constitutional Court has accepted rights to assembly on an ad hoc emergency basis, despite the fact that they are not included in the Hungarian legislation, which is shorter and less differentiated than its Western counterparts. Mr. Trócsányi also mentioned that in 2008 the Constitutional Court stated that the legislature had ignored fundamental developments in the culture of protest, which necessitate several clarifications.
Minister of Interior Sándor Pintér welcomed the decision of the Constitutional Court on behalf of both his Ministry and the police. He went on to stress that, while taking into account international experience, the Government would like to end the conflicts between fundamental human rights in order that the demands of demonstrators can be satisfied and that the police can also maintain public order. The police currently have no legal benchmark on how to act in a conflict between two fundamental human rights: the right to a home and freedom of movement, and the right to demonstrate. As a result courts often deliver rulings which contradict police practice.
Mr. Pintér also said that the Constitutional Court decision backs up the current police practice of seeking a consensus with those reporting the intention to demonstrate which both preserves the awareness-raising nature of demonstrations and also guarantees public safety.
According to the Interior Minister, however, a new element is the section of the Constitutional Court’s decision requiring that the police propose alternative locations to organisers if a demonstration is banned. To date the police have left organisers to choose new locations, but in future they will provide written proposals for possible alternative sites, Mr. Pintér said.
On Tuesday the Constitutional Court issued its ruling after it had been petitioned by someone who had suffered financial loss as a result of foreign currency-denominated debt. The plaintiff challenged the constitutionality of police and court bans on demonstrating in front of the Prime Minister’s house and the Curia in 2014. The Constitutional Court ruled that the court decision in question was not unconstitutional, but declared that by the end of the year Parliament must adopt regulations which assist the police and the courts when there is a conflict between fundamental rights.