Search
Search Results
-
Public Procurement Issues in the Field of Environmental Liability
175-188Views:175In public procurement, the principle of responsible management of public funds applies (Section 142 of the Public Procurement Act). This does not mean that only the techniques of fast-acting, quasi-abbreviated announcements or accelerated public procurement procedures are preferred, but on the contrary also direct tenders without general public procurement procedures are possible. The basis for efficient and transparent public expenditure at least are public procurement procedures that adhere to minimum procedural deadlines and create competition, i.e. facilitate the participation of as many bidders as possible. On the other hand, remedying environmental damage caused by third parties requires that the award of appropriate protection and remedial measures to the relevant contractors and the associated compliance with public procurement procedures do not cause delays that could contribute to extreme environmental degradation. In these cases, it is necessary to check whether there is a case of extreme urgency (imminent danger) and whether the award procedure can be omitted in whole or in part. In line with the above considerations, the present study, with reference to the Hungarian and EU regulations for public procurement, as well as comparative law with the inclusion of German and Austrian examples, examines whether the Hungarian legislator has additional leeway to prevent and quickly eliminate urgent or permanent serious environmental damage in accordance with procurement law.
-
Change of Legal Relations: Consequences for Labour Law of the Restructuring of Public Services
81-103Views:199Changes in the organization of public services often have the consequence of changing the employment relationship of those employed among them. The change is often caused by the transformation of civil service legal relations into private employment law. In the background of changes are usually the legislature's intention to maintain legal relations with the successor employers. This intention is realized in Hungarian labor law and civil service law by various legal and technical methods. The paper reviews these in different areas of public services.
-
Collective Wage Bargaining and the Related Challenges of Labour Law and Labour Relations Regarding Public Services Operated by Publicly Owned Companies
148-161Views:230In the case of state- and municipality-owned companies providing public services, the 2021 salary increase was settled with a six-monthly delay, which was manifested in three-year, so-called “income policy” agreements. However, for the purposes of this paper, the process became relevant mainly due to the aspect of labor relations and it also became suitable for a legal science analysis. During the course of this, within the available space limits, I discuss the process of salary negotiations (with its labor law content and consequences), the theoretical bases of the different collective labor law regulations regarding public assets, and finally, the newly emerging practical issues related to the strike rights regulation of this sector.
-
Municipal Waste Management and the Hungarian Model
47-66Views:122There is an ongoing debate on how the role of municipalities should be changed in the local public service sector due to the financial problems present at local level. The debate is mainly related to determine the adequate level and function of local governments. The author introduces the basic elements of a model of public services that shows the relationship between the public actors (state/municipality), the service provider and the user, including how the need is determined, the service is provided, financed and the service provider is chosen. The author introduces the “Hungarian Model” and its main features: the co-existence of three different model (public, quasi private and mixed) of the waste treatment service sector differing in the relationships established among the stakeholders and in the financing system; and the right of municipalities to freely switch between them. It draws the attention to how the changes in the role of the state and the legal framework influenced the models and reshaped the relationships of the stakeholders without dealing with the consequences.
-
Additional Remarks on the Question of Civil Service Law as a Branch of Law
120-133Views:449The study focuses on the relationship between civil service law and labour law. In Hungary, there have been significant changes in the last decade regarding the regulation of civil service law. The types of the civil service legal relationships have increased, the forums and procedural rules for adjudicating civil service law related disputes have changed, and the number of public employees providing public services has rapidly decreased. This is of particular importance because the existence of these branches of the law is determined by legislation as well. The study concludes that the ability of civil service law to become an independent branch of law will be determined not by 'internal' developments but by legislative ambitions.
-
The Client and Authority Proceedings in the Digital Era
74-101Views:134The study examines the digital transformation of Hungarian administrative procedure and the advance of automation. Based on statistical data, the study highlights that in connection with digital public administration procedures, the importance of customer-focused services appears as the standard of digital public administration. Digitalization is dominated by electronic contact options, online information and submission of electronic requests, rather than complete automation of administrative procedures. The study focuses on digital authority procedures from the point of view of how this manifests itself primarily for the client: how to satisfy the need for information, how to contact the authorities and how to initiate the procedure. In addition to the legal bases, this part primarily focuses on the possibilities. After that, the consequences of digital solutions (automation) for making substantive decisions from the customer's point of view are discussed; this part of the study therefore concentrates more on the normative side of the processes and finally analyzes this. As a result, it states that automatic decision-making is mainly used in case of registrative acts based on official records and decisions embodied in decision-type documents, but there are already examples of the automation of the decision-making mechanism in connection with the production of facts. Although more complex automation is just spreading its wings, in connection with the rapid technical development and innovations of recent years, the legal system must keep up with digitalization and not give in to it.
-
Trends, Directions, Legislative Efforts: the Abolition of the Civil Servant Status
179-195Views:121One of the most spectacular changes to the Hungarian employment system in recent years is that many former civil servants (‘közalkalmazott’) have lost their status and come under the scope of the Labour Code or have been subject to newly created status laws. As the Act on Civil Servants (‘Kjt.’) applies now only a few groups of civil servants, having been emptied out by successive reforms, it is not surprising that the future existence of the Act and of the autonomous status of civil servants is being called into question. But what factors have led to the gradual, and in recent years accelerating, decline of the Kjt.? Is the 'disappearance' of civil servants the result of internal processes that rationally follow from the development of the law, or is it the result of independent economic and political considerations? What was the original role of the Kjt. in the system of employment relationships and how can its ‘emptying’ be understood in an international and historical context? The study argues that this process is not an inevitable consequence of legal doctrinal developments, but rather the result of legislative efforts to abolish the uniform legal status of human service providers. Hungarian legislation is no exception to the neoliberal and neo-Weberian trends, while the comparative advantages previously enjoyed by civil servants are eroding and the regulation is becoming highly fragmented.
-
Decentralization of Welfare Services in France
65-80Views:108The 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.
-
Law and Artificial Intelligence: New character, old solutions? (Thoughts on the book of Jacob Turner)
137-145Views:460Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, buzzwords of the recent times. While the term was created in the 1950s, until recent times it was the domain of sci-fi writers, who tried to explore its impact on society and humanity. The recent breakthroughs in AI technology and the spread of AI based services created the need for lawmakers and legal scholars to try and tackle the problems that AI creates. Although there are a lot of publications in this area, the book from Jacob Turner stands out in the field. The author has researched the subject very well, and using this knowledge he asks and answers not only the most frequent questions, but also those questions that belong to the foundation of AI and law, and which are often overlooked. This review aims to present these questions and answers to the Hungarian public in a shorter form.