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The Right to Equal Treatment and Platform Work with Particular Regard to the Evaluation of Platform Work
26-38Views:236The digital transition has a fundamental impact on everyday life, including the world of work. While working through digital work platforms offers numerous opportunities, it also presents several challenges regarding platform workers’ rights. The paper focuses on platform workers’ right to equal treatment and aims to review the questions and challenges that arise regarding the evaluation of platform workers by consumers. The legal problem is not caused by taking consumer feedback into account per se, but by the fact that the platform relies on such consumer feedback in a different manner and to a different extent than would be the case in traditional employment. Consequently, consumer evaluations and ratings raise several questions regarding the reliability and legality of such feedback.
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Working Through Internet in Hungarian Law. Regulation Instead of Banning?
83-95Views:510Working through digital platforms and apps is a new and rare form of work in Hungary. The spread of digital work is quite new all over the world and also part of the wider trend of precarious forms of work. Hungarian labour law faces serious challenges regarding crowdsourcing and working via apps. The main question is how to insert these new forms of work into the existing labour law framework. These new forms may hardly be considered as employment relationships due to the serious differences. Self-employment cannot be the solution either, since it would leave workers without any employment protection. Therefore, regulation of digital work is unavoidable, even if its details are far from clear for the moment.
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Foreign Loan: Cross-border temporary agency work in Hungary, with special regard to the employment of third-country nationals
43-60Views:481The special feature of temporary agency work is that the employee does not work for the agency which concludes the employment contract with them, but for a third party, the user company, with which the agency enters into a civil law contract for the remunerated transfer of workforce. The article summarises how an international element can appear in this tripartite employment relationship. It covers the rules under which an agency may conclude an employment contract with a foreign employee and also the cases where the agency and the user company are established in different states. Although Hungarian law generally prohibits third-country nationals to work in Hungary as agency workers, this is made possible by an expanding range of exceptions. The article explores the labour law and social security law situation of third-country agency workers in Hungary.
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Hungarian Regulation of Temporary Agency Work from the Aspect of EU Directives
55-78Views:1241Temporary agency work was introduced into Hungarian law on the 1st July 2001. After nearly two decades of experience and numerous legislative changes, the domestic regulation of agency work is still not finished or coherent, and it is burdened with a number of EU harmonization shortcomings, constitutional concerns and practical problems. The purpose of this study is to examine the Hungarian legal regulation of temporary agency work from the point of view of EU law, while also highlighting a number of issues of domestic law that need to be clarified.
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Balancing Work and Life: New Developments in the Field of Legal Protection of Workers
25-44Views:287The present study deals with the current labour law questions of balancing work and private life. The topicality of the study is supported by Directive (EU) 2019/1158 which, built on the existing legislative basis, brings several novelties in this regulative area refreshing the key elements of the criteria of equal employment referring to the employees raising children. The researched regulation fits into the high level, socially motivated; worker-protection Directive designated by the European Pillar of Social Rights, consequently, this aspect also plays a role in elaboration. In my analysis, I concentrate on the regulative background, subject of the new Directive, as well as its connection to fundamental social rights and the new norms describing the potentially strengthening legal protection of workers. I draw conclusions based on their synthesis about the predictable future effects of the new regulation.
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The Protection of Fundamental Rights of People with Disabilities and Reduced Capacity to Work Using Social Farm Services
83-100Views:277The present study examines the fundamental rights of disabled people using the service of social farms – especially people with disabilities and with reduced capacity to work. These rights are essential for these people in order to ensure their employment. These people are often cut off from the labour market, moreover, they cannot be present there. Therefore, fundamental rights ensured within the Fundamental Law of Hungary play a significant role for treating and employing them equally. Labour law and social law protection confirms this constitutional protection.
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Digitization at Work: Expanding Horizons with Loopholes
61-80Views:791The focus of the study is on the emergence and spread of digitization in employment. In this context, the study presents the forms of work that use digitization. On the other hand, it describes the labour market effects of digitalization. The study looks in detail at how COVID-19 has changed the role of teleworking and the home office in employment. This is followed by the presentation of the Hungarian labour law regulation, which deals exclusively with telework. The study makes two proposals to address the codification gap. On the one hand, in connection with application-based work, the introduction of the status of a person with a similar legal status to an employee, which was regulated in the draft of the Labour Code. On the other hand, to impose employer obligations (retraining, job offers) in connection with the spread of automation and robotics in order to prevent dismissal.
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The Importance of Health and Safety in the Liability of Employers for Damages
175-191Views:420Employers are deemed responsible for the health and safety of their employees while they are at work. This study's focus is the exemption from liability based on the foreseeability principle introduced to the Labour Code in 2012. Despite the proclaimed policy change, courts have remained reluctant to grant immunity to employers based on Article 166 of the Labour Code in case of workplace accidents. The uncertainty of interpretation hinders the execution of the new policy and questions the importance of proper health and safety measures implemented by employers to avoid liability. The study focuses on recent case law and employers' practice. The first part analyses the conclusions establishing business decisions of the employers, further investigating the cost performance conduct: pay a fine or spend on safety and health measures. The second part of the study examines cases related to workplace accidents, which are divided into five groups. This group's special attention given to liability in case of extreme weather conditions, third-party accidents, work safety rule violations, accidents, employers' inspection obligations, and other cases.
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The Contractual Framework of the Exploitation of Workers by Employers, in the Light of the First Hungarian Platform Case
135-151Views:203In the first part of the paper, the authors distinguish between two main forms of working contracts: the traditional one and the one established through an electronic platform. In both cases, if the work is of a fixed (contingent) or more informal nature, an employment relationship exists. The former is a typical employment relationship, while the latter is atypical. Suppose the long-term client/agent becomes an employer and the dependency on it is even looser. In that case, the employee may become a permanent contractor/agent, but this is different in substance from the ad hoc contractor/agent relationship. It should therefore be regulated separately in the Civil Code, together with the employment contract. In the second part of the paper, the authors analyze a judgment in a lawsuit concerning a courier service for the delivery of food through an electronic platform intermediary, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the courier service provider was in a contractor/agent relationship and not in an employment relationship, as qualified by the Court of Cassation. However, the authors argue that the Court of Cassation’s position is also acceptable, which would allow for the classification of dependent self-employment arising from a formal self-employment.
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Is This the Way Labour Law Should Protect the Employee? Review of György Kiss’s New Book
203-212Views:318Our review is about György Kiss's book, its title being Employment Flexibility and the Protection of Employee Status (A Possible Approach to Examining the Content of the Employment Relationship). The work raises the question of the future of labour law regulation, using the results and findings of the past. After describing the roots of Roman law, we can learn about the development of the current form of labour law through the development of the Germanic, Francophone and Anglo-Saxon legal systems. In addition to the historical view, the dogmatic foundations are also outlined in the work, so the content processing of the employment contract takes place on several levels before the author discusses the labour law applicability of the relational contract theory he raises. The description of all these bases makes the work suitable for those interested in labour law to better understand the contractual theories of different legal systems. We want to give an insight into this in the review, so that in addition to presenting the work, our own personal views and opinions will also appear.
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Challenges of Sustainable Employment
111-128Views:385When the Green Deal says we need to rethink policies for clean energy (see economy, industry, production and consumption, large-scale infrastructure, transport, food and agriculture, construction, tax policy, social benefits) what does this really mean for employment? What would it mean for the world of work if employment were to focus on sustainability, climate protection and the common interests of society? What changes would a shift to a greener economy bring about in the labour market? How would it affect already vulnerable groups of workers? One possible answer to these questions already exists: green work, which is the subject of this study.
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The role of Community Work in Decreasing Prison Population: the Finnish Experience
81-96Views:257A major part of the endeavours in recent punitive policy is to find alternatives for imprisonment. By a well-thought-out application of alternative sanctions and especially community work, criminal policy may greatly affect the proportion of the imposed sentences of imprisonment. One of the good examples can be seen in Finland, where the prison population of 200 convict per 100.000 citizens could be decreased to the quarter in a few decades. This study endeavours to present this process, hoping that such a short review may be usefully edifying also for Hungarian criminal policy.
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Data Protection Requirements in the Relationship between Temporary-work Agency and User Undertaking
70-82Views:266In temporary agency work the relationship between the temporary work agency and the user-undertaking is often not adequately or correctly understood in the context of the processing of personal data. This leads to a deterioration of protection of personal data as well as labour market rights and obligations. The purpose of this study is to explore when we can speak about a controller- processor, a joint controller or a controller- controller relationship, which will clarify who has to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure and to be able to demonstrate that the processing is performed in accordance with the Regulation.
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Work of Costantino Mortati in the Field of Public Law
23-41Views:162The aim of my article is to present an overview of certain stages of Costantino Mortati’s scientific work (Constitutional Court’s judge and professor of law) on the basis of Italian bibliography. His most popular work, entitled “the Constitution in material sense” (1940) conforms to problems and methodology of Italian constitutional law, while it reflects to contemporary schools of European jurisprudence and changes of institutions and theories of modern state. Behind Mortati’s theories about the State and the Constitution, the Italian liberal state regarded as heritage of risor- gimento, and the symptoms of its crises, birth and fall of the totalitarian state and the fundamental public law-aspects of the democratic and republic state can be found.
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Questions of organizing working hours in regard to public holidays
134-147Views:275The study shows the dogmatic effect of the specific legal nature of public holidays on the organization and remuneration of working time. This effect can be seen in the duality that the public holiday affects (reduces) the duration of the parties' performance on the one hand, but also affects the conditions of actual performance, mainly because working time can only be prescribed under special conditions. But this duality also determines the dogmatics of public holiday pay rules: the legislature compensates for the reduced working hours due to public holidays, on the one hand, and the “inconvenience of work” that an employee performs on public holidays, on the other.
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Questions of divisions of powers in the 21st century after the adoption of the new Fundamental Law of Hungary
24-37Views:452The question of division of state powers is a crucial part of constitutional law determining how state organs work (or should work) in theory and in practice. After the adoption of the new Fundamental Law of Hungary, there are some modifications in the Hungarian constitutional system, including the division of powers as well. In this study we examine the original model of “3 branches of power – 1-1 function” as a starting point, and the other factors and branches which can modify the original model. In the study we try to focus to the examples of the former and present Hungarian legal system as certain proves of our theory about the new frameworks of division of powers in Hungary. In the end of this study we also examine, as an indirect argumentation, the opposite side of the separation of powers, i.e. concentration of powers.
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Is the Implementation of Home Office Legally Feasible? The Criteria for Home Office and its Framework Within Employment Law
59-82Views:1628The year of 2020 was the challenge of “home office”. Although, the publicity uses the term of “home office” as the legal construction of working from home, this approach is misleading. Moreover, the Hungarian Labour Code does not contain any regulation about “home office”, while this legal source embraces two other methods in connection to work from home. These legal institutes are the teleworking and the legal relationship of outworkers. The problem with the aforementioned legal institutes is that the parties must take into account several rules and must apply these solutions regularly, on a permanent basis. However according to the legal literature, the “home office” is created by the economic and human resource management practice of the employers, where they intend to employ the workers mainly at home irregularly, on an ad-hoc basis. At the same time, “home office” does not have a legal framework in the Hungarian Labour Code, therefore the legal literature has been trying to find a real solution for this employment method in the general norms of the Labour Code. In the following article we are going to use the home office definition of the literatures and highlight the background legal institutes and concepts of this working method. Although we are going to set our opinion about which legal institute may be applicable in this sense, in the conclusion we are going to emphasise that legislation and rules regarding “home office” are indispensable.
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Book Review of Szilvia Váradi's "Data Protection in the Age of Artificial Intelligence"
Views:162The review presents Szilvia Váradi’s monograph "Data Protection in the Age of Artificial Intelligence", the first comprehensive work on the subject in Hungarian. One of the book’s major strengths is that it guides the reader from the introduction of technological foundations to the detailed analysis of legal and data protection issues, with particular emphasis on the relevance of the GDPR and the AI Act. Váradi situates the significance of AI not only within a legal, but also within a social and economic context, underlining the urgency of regulation. The book clearly explains the data protection challenges of machine learning and large language models, highlighting problems of transparency and accountability. From a critical perspective, the detailed technological background may at times appear encyclopedic, yet this broader perspective provides a valuable basis for interdisciplinary approaches. The review concludes that the book is both a pioneering and a guiding work, serving the needs of professionals as well as a wider readership.
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Remembering of the Work of Somló Bódog Juristische Grundlehre on the Centenary of its Publishing
149-157Views:209Remembering of the Work of Somló Bódog Juristische Grundlehre on the Centenary of its Publishing.
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The Importance of the Wage Guarantee Fund in the Framework of Labour Law Protection
177-192Views:297Act LXVI of 1994 on the Wage Guarantee Fund and the guarantee system regulated by it, is especially topical nowadays, as more and more employers in Hungary have become insolvent in connection with the crisis caused by the coronavirus epidemic. In many cases, the employers subject to the procedure are not able to meet their wage obligations to their employees, so the state must guarantee the values that can be expressed in exact monetary terms – the work performed and its financial compensation – and at the same time the social security of employees. In the present study, we examine the applicability of the Wage Guarantee Fund, which serves to cover the wages to be paid by insolvent employers, from the perspective of the social security and the enforcement of employees’ claims.
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Women at the Crossroads of Family and Employment Policies
Views:1723Labour market situation of young mothers highly depends on the convergence of family and employment policies. Since 2010 there have been important changes in the Hungarian policies in order to stimulate fertility and to enhance the female employment rate. In our research we combined legal and sociological methodologies to analyse the effect of these policies. We argue that Hungarian policy has been in a serious uphill struggle to find a balance between two contradicting principles: providing sufficient family allowances and maintaining labour market flexibility by weak protection of employees. This dichotomy of principles has led to an unsustainable employment policy and made women more vulnerable in the labour market. We suggest that the differences would be reconciled through labour reforms, measures concerning working time arrangements, part time work and protection against dismissal have to be revisited along with protection of fathers with young children.
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EU Case Law Guidelines on Registering Three-Dimensional (Shape) EUTM in the Light of the Trademark Reform
128-142Views:264The case-law developed by the European Court of Justice aims to ensure consistency and legal certainty in the registration of EU three-dimensional trademarks. It interacts closely with the legislative amendments introduced by the trademark reform, which aim to make the registration procedure for EU trademarks more flexible and transparent, thanks to the European Court of Justice's work in interpreting and developing the law. The problem of the definition and registration procedure of three-dimensional marks is an important issue in EU trademark case law, as this category of marks is the most popular of the non-traditional marks for which the trademark reform provides a legal framework, but also overlaps with other forms of intellectual property protection.
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Alternative Solutions to the Problems Posed by the Coronavirus Pandemic in the Field of Social Law (An International Outlook)
124-144Views:368The 2020 coronavirus pandemic is forcing such political, economic and social responses from the leaders of the nations of the world which in many cases have never been seen before. Excellent new concepts have been formed through the work of professionals, and there have been initiatives that have proven in the short term to be not well-founded. The present study was created in order not to miss the chance to examine the established practices, taking advantage of the opportunity provided by the crisis, as this year can offer many lessons for decision-makers for the future.
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Accelerated Changes in the Content and Consequences of Certain Elements of the Employment Relationship
Views:37Labour law, as a basic civil law, regulates the contractual relations of parties who are in a consensual relationship with each other. However, the economic background of the legal relationship has ensured the employer's de facto superiority since time immemorial, which the legal system tries to counteract with certain claudicatory solutions, but nevertheless recognises by accepting the power of unilateralism. The challenges of the 21st century have changed the status quo. It is necessary to recognise that the societal demand for change is not a momentary whim arising from a cataclysm, but a real societal expectation to which legislation must respond quickly in order to preserve competitiveness.
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On the Road to Change? Attorney's Fees Not Recognised by Court Practice: Legal Loophole or Misinterpretation of the Law by the Court?
107-134Views:190Nowadays, it is generally accepted that the lawyers are an essential part of the judicial system, despite the absence of any reference to this in the constitution or other normative provisions. In a market economy, there is no question that a lawyer is remunerated for the work he performs, and that the lawyer receives this remuneration in the form of fees or reimbursement of expenses from the client who has concluded a contract of engagement with him. In the case of litigation, however, the costs incurred by the lawyer's client may be passed on to the opposing party, since, as a rule, the costs of the successful party, including the lawyer's fees, are to be paid by the unsuccessful party. This paper examines the basic legal provisions that ensure the enforcement of attorney's fees in civil court proceedings, and then presents a number of striking cases that demonstrate that the attorney's representation of his client in civil proceedings is either not compensated at all or only partially compensated in a manner recognised by the court, in the form of a formal injunction binding the opposing party. In the present paper the adequate issues related to the provision of legal representation in civil litigation are presented, on the one hand, from the procedural law and litigation efficiency aspects, on the other hand, from the contractual freedom and thirdly, from the constitutional law aspects, focusing on the judicial practice. The study describes the change in judicial practice in the spring of 2024. The author seeks an answer to the question whether the principles established by the court practice were due to a legal error, and therefore whether legislative action to eliminate the discrepancies was justified, or whether it was simply a case of an erroneous interpretation of the law by the courts before the spring of 2024, which justified only a change of approach in the court practice within the framework of the existing legal regulation, and therefore no further legislative intervention is necessary.