At a conference entitled “Dialogue and Identity”, organised on the fourth anniversary of adoption of the Fundamental Law of Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán declared that enacting the Fundamental Law had been a historic undertaking and a necessity. According to the Prime Minister, the greatest difference between the text of the old, “value-neutral” constitution and the Fundamental Law is that the latter “asserts our constitutional identity”.
Mr. Orbán mentioned the following as elements of Hungary’s constitutional identity: protection of language and culture; community values; declaration of a work-based society; and the historical dimension, in that the Fundamental Law also incorporates the unique legal documents of Hungarian history. Elaborating on the latter, he emphasised that, as long as there is a State of Hungary, the historical constitution will exist, which is why the document adopted four years ago is called the Fundamental Law: “it can be incorporated into the structure of the historical constitution and within its attainments”.
Mr. Orbán stressed that the Fundamental Law represents the continuity of Hungarian national history and political-cultural life; therefore Hungary could not have aimed at a wording that could have featured in the constitution of any of the other European democracies. He added that neither could a form of wording have been sought which gave the slightest suggestion that the Hungarians had arrived in Europe just the previous day, as the changes in the country’s life needed to be reflected in the constitution.
“We regarded the constitution as the nation’s identity card”, the Prime Minister explained, adding that Hungarians could not disregard that which was theirs, their land, language or natural and intellectual assets.
Among the passages of the Fundamental Law, he highlighted the declaration of Christianity as a force for preserving the nation, and the assertion that the Hungarian state’s power of self-determination was lost on 19 March 1944 and restored only on 2 May 1990. He also mentioned the declaration that the crimes of National Socialism and Communism shall have no statute of limitations, the responsibility for Hungarians living outside Hungary’s borders and provisions against increasing sovereign debt above a certain level.
The Prime Minister explained that former communist Member States of the European Union had introduced new constitutions before their accession to the EU, but Hungary was unable to do so, and had to create the Fundamental Law after its accession. He said that the current system of EU law not only passed judgement, but was also itself subject to judgement: “Thus we have been able to gauge the performance of European institutions, their double standards, their exertion of pressure and their ideologically-based exaggerations”.
The Prime Minister also spoke about the previous constitution, which he described as “an old, amended constitution, ‘souped up’ for a market economy: a Mercedes engine installed in a Trabant, juddering along in a series of lurches.” It had also lacked a declaration of historical continuity, he added.
Mr. Orbán went on to say that in 2010, however, Hungarian voters understood that “we had to end the protracted and chaotic period of transition”. The Government rejected further amendment of the already “over-amended” constitution, he said, because “it could not possibly have been patched enough to cover the redness of the original text”.
In summary, the Prime Minister said that the Fundamental Law of Hungary was created on the basis of a unified system of values and a soundly-elaborated concept, “during its construction, stones rejected by previous builders have also been used”, thus the achievements of the historical constitution and provisions derived from earlier rulings by the Constitutional Court have also been incorporated. “We have something to defend, and we will have something to defend in future European debates”, he said.