Sentencing is connected to the trial stage of the criminal procedure; more precisely, it takes place at its end. Judges fulfil only a part, and not even the hardest one, of their duty by establishing criminal liability as a result of the evidentiary procedure. Sentencing is a rather complex and complicated process. Judges face a lot of expectations: they often have to reconcile contradictory expectations with each other in order to impose a satisfactory sentence for the parties. The process of sentencing has received intense criticism. Sometimes judges are accused of imposing unduly lenient sentences or criticized for too severe punishments.

Another problem is presented by the fact that different sentences are passed for crimes of the same sort at different courts in the country. Sentencing thus raises many theoretical questions that I seek to answer in the study.

In the world of employment we can find several aspects that have effect on the labour market. Labour market cannot be independent from the legal regulation of employment; moreover – according to the tendencies – labour market processes basically define the role of labour law. A fundamental difference can be observed between the approach of Anglo-Saxon countries and researchers and the viewpoint of the continental law systems. In this paper the emphasized question is analyzed through these two different approaches according to the following premise: the Anglo-Saxon legal thinking defining the current development of labour law bears significant differences related to the labour law regulation – which means the direct regulation of labour market – and to the legal guarantees behind employment as well. From the viewpoint of the labour market two main questions are examined in this paper: on the one hand, the expected and necessary level and method of public intervention in connection with social rights, and on the other hand the deepness of the intervention of labour law into the social relations driven by the market.

It has been seven years since the european Small Claims Procedure was introduced as a sui generis european procedure and an alternative to existing national civil procedures. However, it works in close interaction with national laws, as the regulation leaves many aspects of the procedure to national legislation. The article analyzes the legal instruments that serve the implementation of regulation 861/2007/ EC in member states, particularly the issues of mutual recognition and enforcement of ESC judgments, communication between the court and the parties, review and appeal of the judgment, and other specific issues. It concludes that knowledge of national procedural law is often vital to succeed in an ESC procedure in a foreign country. Smooth and efficient functioning of the procedure requires cooperation mechanisms not only among member states, but also among judges, lawyers, and enforcement officers.

It has always been a difficult question for the State to ensure effective decision-making processes for instances where public participation is considered to be a requirement. This question might be even more essential when it comes to disputes concerning large-scale projects with environmental impact. When the public is affected by such project, the contractor must be really prudent, otherwise high number of litigation may be initiated afterwards. The very special form of mediation, the so-called environmental mediation may offer a solution to this problem, by allowing all participants to meet and discuss every crucial issues related to projects described above. It is also important to emphasize that not the same requirements apply to environmental mediation and to other civil law related mediation procedures. The aim of environmental mediation would not be less than to improve the quality of public bodies’ decisions.

This study investigates the transformation of environmental protection as a specialized administrative duty in Hungary, with special attention on the (changing) roles of local self-governments in this area. Following the outline of the general correlations within the topic, the study inspects several individual administrative fields, with attention given to the relationship with environmental protection policies. Our plan is to extend this analysis in the future, in hopes of covering additional specialised administrative areas as well. Our firm opinion is that the solutions provided by the sectorial approach inherent in our administrative system proved to be ineffective insolving today’s global issues. To ensure an effective environmental protection strategy, the organizations of public administration must be involved with larger roles assigned to them. Although the methods of regulation in this area are diverse, the most widespread approach proves to be the direct administrative intervention, even nowadays.

The subject of the present paper is the explanation and justification of environmental taxes in general terms and, in particular, the assessment of the recent european trends as well as the examination of the practice of the EU Court of Justice followed in this field. The paper considers ecotaxes as the means of fiscal policy that can be put into the service of green growth. For the time being, the enforcement of ecological policy is restricted in many aspects within the EU framework, being unilaterally subordinated to the requirement of free competition. For this reason, the EU law mechanisms of adjustment may get stuck in cases where intervention is not necessary in order to have more but, on the contrary, to have less freedom of market. Since it can be considered as obvious from the perspective of thermodynamic restraints that market imperfections cannot be precluded, the possible aim of intervention is certainly not the reconstruction of free trade, but the suspension of the laws of market. The political and legal basis for this is still missing in the European Union both in theory and practice what can be seen as a serious problem.

The European Commission issues guidelines and other soft law instruments to define the compatibility conditions of State aid to be granted by Member States with the internal market. Although the soft law is only binding on the Commission it has not negligible indirect effect on the Member States state aid policy and thereby on other policies. So far it was not clear how much beneficiaries could find remedy at European Courts against the soft law issued by the Commission. The present article gives a description on the adoption of the new energy and environmental aid guidelines with the focus on the conditions related to aid to operating aid to energy generation from renewable energy sources in the context of the State Aid modernization initiative. A comparison to the previous rules was also made. Thereafter the article summarizes an order of the General Court issued in a procedure where an applicant has initiated action for annulment of the guidelines. The article also tries to draw some conclusions about the possibilities and limits of beneficiaries and Member States to question the legality of State aid soft law instruments at European Courts.

The case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human rights set the minimum level for the protection of fundamental rights that has to be guaranteed by all contracting parties, although national laws can establish higher standards. Point II of the general explanations of Bill No. T/13972 on the new Act on Criminal Procedure states that “meeting the requirements of the Fundamental Law of Hungary and the obligations of international law and EU law obviously mean a safeguarding minimum.” In Hungary the case law of the ECHR is reflected more and more both in the judgements of Hungarian courts and in the guidelines of higher courts but the difficulties of establishing interpretations in harmony with ECHR case law are common. The paper analyses the judgments of the ECHR in Hungarian cases between 2013 and 2016 related to pretrial detention, effective defence and the circumstances of restraint.