The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union is a human rights NGO. Since our foundation in 1994, we have been working for everybody being informed about their fundamental human rights and empowered to enforce it against the undue interference by those in position of public power.
In March 2012 the Venice Commission issued an opinion regarding the new Hungarian cardinal laws on the court system and the judiciary, stating that “the reform as a whole threatens the independence of the judiciary”. The Hungarian Government has initiated an amendment of the two cardinal laws in question, apparently as a result of the Venice Commission’s opinion. However, the proposed amendments do not eliminate the conceptional problems of the new regulation.
A draft bill on the re-use of public sector information submitted to the Hungarian Parliament by the government would make the national FOI legislation highly unpredictable - according to the HCLU and K-Monitor, major Hungarian NGOs working for transparency and freedom of information. The proposal intends to harmonize Hungarian freedom of information legislation with the EU law by implementing the 2003/98/EC Directive on the re-use of public sector information. The latter is to be revised soon, due to a proposal of the European Commission. The HCLU and K-Monitor ask legislative authorities to withdraw their draft proposal due to the following reasons.
The opportunity for the government to make good on the mishandling of events and its series of mistakes in Gyöngyöspata has come and gone. It failed to condemn politicizing and operations based on the theory of collective criminality and it also failed to lay blame on the right-wing political party Jobbik for inciting hatred against the Roma minority.
Instead, the government made the reasoning of Jobbik its own and it is more worried about its international reputation, while clearly, any government is judged upon its own actions and failures.
One of the worst negative consequences of the global war on drugs is stigma - watch our movie and count the costs with us!
On Friday 20 April 2012, the Hungarian Minister of Justice and Public Administration, Mr. Tibor Navracsics submitted to Parliament a draft Parliamentary Resolution to not execute the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) taken in the case of Fratanolo v Hungary. The judgment, handed down by the Strasbourg-based court in November 2011, is the second such decision establishing that Hungary had violated the right to freedom of expression protected by the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms by criminalizing the wearing of the red star in public. Under the minister’s proposal, the penal provision should remain in effect and Hungary should not pay the just satisfaction awarded by the ECtHR.
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