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• Organic laws and the principle of democracy in France and Spain

  62-74

  Boldizsár Szentgáli-Tóth

  Views:

  147

  During the last decades, several countries have entrenched a special subcategory of law, which is adopted by stricter procedural rules than that of the ordinary legislative process. These laws are enacted by qualified majority, by the consent of the two chambers of the legislature, and they are subject to mandatory constitutional review before their promulgation, or additional safeguards are implemented in the ordinary legislative process. In this study, I compare the experiences of two crucial legal systems, France and Spain, which provide two different frameworks of qualified law. My aim is to identify the most contested issues from the legal nature of qualified laws, and to seek the proper solutions of these issues, as well as an ideal model of qualified law. My contribution focuses on the relationship between qualified laws and the principle of democracy, and aims to open up new perspectives in this regard.

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

  29-42

  József Hajdú

  Views:

  343

  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.

• Freedom of Speech and Inclusive Society

  9-32

  Gábor Attila Tóth

  Views:

  151

  This article deal with the most actual theme of the limitation of the freedom of speech the hate speech.

• Judicial Review in Emergency Situations: the Relevant Case Law of the European Court of Human Rights

  200-218

  Gábor Mészáros

  Views:

  153

  Emergencies are mostly sudden, and in most cases states need special measures to deal with them. For this reason liberal democracies have standing constitutional or special legal powers to derogate human rights for the sake of order. Those democracies that do not have such powers, use impromptu ones. It is possible for authoritarian governments to abuse emergency powers in order to stay in power, to derogate human rights and to silence the opposition. Therefore it is essential for a liberal democracy to have strict limits for the duration, circumstance and scope of emergency powers. There are human rights regimes (for example: the European Convention on Human Rights) which have to respect the member states’ duty and responsibility in such cases. This article tries to examine this special case law of the European Court of Human Rights. The question is whether a European Human Rights regime is capable of becoming the guardian of human rights in cases of national emergencies, or the sovereignty of states also means that there is very narrow margin to prove legality above security?

• Decentralization of Welfare Services in France

  65-80

  Zoltán Józsa

  Views:

  134

  The principle of decentralization is widely applied in public administration. Despite the conceptual insecurity decentralization is often linked to the principles of democracy, participation, efficiency providing a normative value for the principle. Practical experiences, however, show that the advantages and disadvantages of decentralization are influenced by historical, economical, social, institutional and cultural context. Decentralization policy to increase the effectiveness of French welfare services could not change the institutional structure with strong historical roots and to improve the service quality. The strengthening of task and competences of the county level led to the failure of decentralization due to the lack of funding, personal and coordination problems.