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• Minority Rights and the European Court of Human Rights

  138-160

  Csenge Merkel

  Views:

  179

  This paper aims to present the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) regarding minorities’ rights. Even though minority rights as such are not listed in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the ECtHR has developed an evolving minority rights protection under it. This paper describes the concrete cases of minority rights protection and shows how the case law evolved throughout the years. The ECtHR recognized the right to self-identification, the right to culture, the right to use minority languages, the right of assembly and the freedom of expression regarding minorities. This paper argues that there might be a shift towards a greater diversity protection in the future under the ECHR.
  

• A New Admissibility Criteria – the „Significant Disadvantage” in the Case-law of the European Court of Human Rights

  131-138

  Sándor Szemesi

  Views:

  117

  Since its adoption in 1950, the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms has established one of the best mechanism for the international protection of human rights. Because of the continuous increase of the European Court of Human Rights’ workload, the modification of the Court’s procedure was needed. During this reform, a new admissibility requirement is inserted in Article 35 of the Convention, which empowers the Court to declare inadmissible applications where the applicant has not suffered a significant disadvantage. This new admissibility criteria is applicable since 1 June 2010 (when Protocol No. 14. entered into force). The study examines the travaux preparatoires and the current text of the Protocol, and analyzes the case-law of the Court concerning this new criteria.

• Hungarian legislative changes induced by the case-law of European Court of Human Rights

  109-122

  Andrea Klemencsics

  Views:

  152

  Indisputably, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has an effect on national legal systems. In this study I examine the type of this effect in the Hungarian legal system through the case law of the year 2014, and as an outcome, I would like to demonstrate that the ECtHR has both direct and indirect impacts on the national legislation in Hungary. As a result of the judgments’ direct impact, changes are made in the national legislation, meanwhile the indirect impact can only be detected in the decisions of the Hungarian Constitutional Court or domestic courts. Obviously, the direct impact is the most significant and most noticeable, however, the significance of indirect impact has been gradually increasing in the recent period. Based on this idea, I would like to point out that both effects are present in the Hungarian legislation, and seem to show an increasing trend, although the judicial bodies mean an exception in this practice. Nonetheless, according to the European practice, the judicial bodies will most likely refer to the international norm and the case law of the ECtHR in the near future.

• Multilevel System of Fundamental Rights Protection in Practice, in the Light of the Dismissal of Government Officials without Justification

  120-141

  Zsuzsanna Szabó

  Views:

  143

  Today, in the European multi-level and cooperative constitutional area the European Convention on Human Rights, the constitutional value provisions of the EU Treaties together with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, as well as the constitutions of the member states of the EU function as parallel constitutions. The legal remedies offered by international forums by nature are subsidiary, because it is desirable that legal issues of human rights be solved by the states at national level. The obligation of the exhaustion of domestic legal remedies as a procedural precon- dition is needed in order that the national level should have the chance to remedy the violation of human rights within its own legal system.

  The present paper focuses on Art. 8 para. (1) of Act LVIII of 2010 on the legal status of government officials, which states that the employer has the right to terminate the contract of goverment officials by two months’ notice period without any justification. The research is of considerable interest because the dismissed officials – who, in my opinion, de facto suffered injury by violation of human rights – were forced to turn to international forums because of the fact that the Hungarian legal system was not able to grant them adequate reparation. Therefore, the examination also evaluates the current level of fundamental rights arbitration and the jurisdiction using fundamental principles in Hungary.

• Luxembourg v Strasbourg – Legal Impediments in the Process of the Accession of the EU to the ECHR

  101-119

  Zoltán Angyal

  Lilla Nóra Kiss

  Views:

  132

  The accession of the European Union (EU) to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) has been on the agenda of the EU for long. Although the Lisbon Treaty settles this question in theory by obliging the EU to accede, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) resorted to its rights laid down in the Treaties and published its Opinion 2/13 on the matter by the full Court. This opinion scrutinizes the draft document concerning accession. According to the opinion the EU cannot accede to the ECHR in the present form because the draft document is not in compliance with the special characteristics and features of EU law, therefore it would require the amendment or reorganisation of the whole EU legal system. By this judgement the ECJ outlines the legal impediments in the way of the accession. The main objective of our article – after summarizing the brief history and legal framework of the accession – is to present and evaluate the critical elements of accession determined by the ECJ and predict the decision’s possible consequences.

• 60th Anniversary of the European Social Charter: Some Proactive Dilemmas

  29-42

  József Hajdú

  Views:

  312

  The European Social Charter is a human rights treaty of the Council of Europe. For 60 years, the Charter has been protecting the social and economic rights of citizens across Europe. During these years, the Charter has been revised and new rights have been included to take into account the challenges facing our modern societies. But the Charter has remained at the heart of the Council of Europe’s statutory goals: human rights, rule of law and democracy, which cannot be realised without respect for social rights. However, sixty years after the adoption of the Charter, and thirty years after the adoption of the Turin Protocol of 1991 reforming the supervisory mechanism, the Convention has yet to realise its full potential. In this article the Charter’s two supervisory mechanisms are analysed and some proactive dilemmas and possible solutions are outlined.