Search
Search Results
-
Trends, Directions, Legislative Efforts: the Abolition of the Civil Servant Status
179-195Views:131One 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.
-
The Legal Status of Macro-prudential Authorities in the Member States of the European Union
Views:43The study examines the main components of the organisational framework for macro-prudential management in the Member States of the European Union. The organisational design of macro-prudential management is a matter for the Member States, which can themselves be grouped into different models. The study first presents the international and EU standards and recommendations on the status of macro-prudential bodies in the Member States, then summarises the basic, theoretically relevant features of the status of macro-prudential bodies in the Member States, presents the analytical methodology of the study and finally analyses the features of the status of macro-prudential bodies in the Member States according to the methodology defined. The study concludes that there is a tendency for the EU macro-prudential body to standardise the basic elements of the status of macro-prudential bodies. However, the process of unification of the content of the institutional framework is still at an early stage and a variety of legal solutions can be identified for each of the substantive aspects. The study concludes that the institutional framework of macro-prudential policy can be described by a coordinated unification of the substantive pillars, with different formal features, but with different legal solutions.
-
The Legal Status of Titanic
8-18Views:167It has been ten decades now since the luxurious, unsinkable ship started its first and last voyage. The centenary of the tragedy has put ancient shipwrecks into the centre of attention and denoted the legal gaps and anomalies of national and international legal efforts to regulate their legal status and to protect them from treasure hunters. The essay aims to define the legal status of R.M.S. Titanic as being one of the most famous shipwrecks of our time, its story and legal situation might be the object-lesson for the problems and deficiencies of the legal issue of international protection of underwater cultural heritage, the sovereignty and ownership of historical objects found at sea and the anomalies of customary international law concerning shipwrecks.
-
Reflections from the Viewpoint of Legal History on the Muslims in Hungary
11-23Views:103The Islamic religion, on the basis of Act No. XVII promulgated in 1917 in the Kingdom of Hungary, was given the status of a „recognized” religion i.e. religious community (in Hungarian: „elismert felekezet”, in Latin „licita religio”). By virtue of this act the Islamic religion received the same legal status as the Baptist church in 1905. It has to be pointed out that according to the census taken in 1910 in the Kingdom of Hungary, including Croatia-Slovenia which enjoyed a large degree of autonomy, there were only as many as 757 citizens belonging to the Islamic religious community. In this study we examine the legal status of the Muslim Community in Hungary until the end of World War I. As a main conclusion it can be stated that the law of Muslims (ius personarum) had never became a part of the legal system of Hungary, and that Islamic law never confronted the ius patrium.
-
Legal interpretation issues regarding the status of the trade unions
79-95Views:663The unique purpose and role of trade unions is the protection of the employees’ social and economic interests. As compared to the previous concept, the applicable labour code introduced a conceptually new approach with respect to collective labour law, including the purpose of trade unions, reducing the trade unions’ rights to such a minimum level which shall be generally granted for a civil organization operating in the interest of a certain purpose. In my study, some legal interpretation questions –without the ambition to be exhaustive – that arise in practice come under analysis, which highlight in a crystal clear manner the question as to what sort of practical issues are raised and interpretation possibilities are opened by certain items of the Hungarian labour law regulation in connection with the legal status of the trade unions and the exercise of their rights.
-
Collective Agreement’s Status in Law
Views:544The collective agreement is a Janus-faced legal phenomenon. From one side it has the nature of a contractual relationship where the parties have the right to determine the content of the contract, also including the choice itself, whether they establish it or not. On the other hand, the collective agreement acts as a legal norm as well. From this aspect its regulations are also obligatory for those persons who were not involved during the set-up process, or even for those who disagrees with some parts of the document. Therefore it is a crucial question in labour law as to how these contracts are handled by law. The Hungarian Labour Code came into force in 2012 contained an approach in which the legislator wanted to empower the legal status of collective agreement. To achieve this goal, in some parts the Act gives the parties the possibility to deviate from the law and to customize the norms in order to make it fit their current relationship. In this paper I examine the nature of the Collective Agreement and show its specialities in the Hungarian legal environment.
-
Digitization at Work: Expanding Horizons with Loopholes
61-80Views:424The 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.
-
The Legal Status of the Inventor in the First Hungarian Patent Act
19-33Views:98The first Hungarian Act on Patents was adopted in 1895. The study examines the regulation of the inventor’s legal status in this act and the problems the legislature had to solve. In the first part of the study the inventor’s rights are described regarding the inventor’s personal and valuable rights and interests. By the beginning of the 20th century license became the most important valuable right and interest, although its regulation could not be found in any act. In fact, a decision of the Patent Court in 1928 declared the regulation of leasehold valid, which raised greater and greater difficulties in legal application from the second half of the 20th century. The second part of the study examines the inventor’s obligation of payment and functioning. The latter is one of the special features of the intellectual property system which is regulated by the Industrial Property Union.
-
Is This the Way Labour Law Should Protect the Employee? Review of György Kiss’s New Book
203-212Views:168Our 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.
-
The Legal Status of Victims of Sexual Violence in International, European Union and Domestic Law
Views:56The study describes the concept and the legal status of the victim of sexual violence in view of the fact that the definition of victim in criminal procedure law is not the same as the broader definition of victim used in criminology at domestic or international levels. The Me Too movement drew attention to a problem in 2017 that is still waiting to be solved years later: preventing and eradicating violence against women, as well as making the role of the victims during procedure and their legal options more effective. A brief, overview categorization of this legal situation shows what emerging tendencies can be discovered in the European Union’s legislative process nowadays, and based on these, what the problematic areas are in domestic law where change is needed.
-
The Legal Status of Women in the Balkans from the 19th Century to the Present
101-123Views:255One of the most important pieces of legislation in Serbian history was the Serbian Civil Code (SCC) of 1844, which remained in force for more than 100 years. It dates back to the time when the country was still part of the Ottoman Empire and survived the state law regimes of the Principality of Serbia, the Kingdom of Serbia, the Kingdom of Serbs-Croats and Slovenians and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia before being liquidated by socialist Yugoslavia in 1945. From the moment it was created, there had been serious criticism, such as that it was modelled on the Austrian civil code and thus did not correspond to Serbian legal-social relations, and so there was no indication that it would be a durable piece of legislation. In its 100-year history, most of the criticism concerned the discriminatory provisions on women. Mostly, the legal situation of married women was detrimental, as they had no capacity to act, and were represented by their husbands. Their proclaimed equality took place in 1946, but they actually received the same legal status as men in the late 20th century.
-
The New Hungarian Act on Irrigation in the Light of a Landscape-Orientated and Land-Use-Based Water Management
42-66Views:383The present article relates to water governance, and within that a specific Hungarian problem, namely, the cumulative water-related damage occurring in the Great Plain (floods, droughts and inland water) and the ambiguous situation of environmental services. Due to the complexity of the problem, the solution itself can only be systematic and can therefore only be solved in the context of integrated and adaptive water management. In Hungarian, this water management is defined as landscape-oriented water management by a research group connected to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The possible implementation of landscape-oriented water management has recently emerged in connection with the development of agricultural irrigation. The novelty of this study is the assessment of the new Hungarian Act concerning the irrigation taking into account the different aspects of hydrology, pedology and jurisprudence.
-
Additional Remarks on the Question of Civil Service Law as a Branch of Law
120-133Views:454The 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.
-
Multilevel System of Fundamental Rights Protection in Practice, in the Light of the Dismissal of Government Officials without Justification
120-141Views:139Today, 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.
-
Crimean Secession in International Law
9-28Views:311This article provides detailed insights into the validity of remedial secession, the two major judicial opinions that have addressed it (Kosovo advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice, and the Quebec Secession Reference case decided by the Supreme Court of Canada), and the steep, but evolving, path to legitimacy it may now be travelling. This article does so within the context of Crimea’s secession referendum, declaration of independence, and de facto statehood, and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. It covers the international community’s reaction to these events – and the disparity among academic reactions to the vitality of remedial secession. It traces the UN General Assembly’s 2014 Crimean debate – concluding that it is the most authoritative referee for judging Russia’s claim to the validity of the Crimean secession.
-
Environmental Liability Law: Environmental Civil Experts’ view
86-112Views:138Environmental liability legislation, both the ELD in Europe and CERCLA in US, is burdened with significant compromises, but even if so, they are too leniently implemented. Moreover, rather scarce data are available on the liability cases and on the status of polluted sites, therefore the system is unable to amend itself. There is no reason to be surprised: expenses of protection or remedy of the polluted sites are enormous, the concerned industries would get into a poor competition position in the market if faced with too stringent liability. In the exceptional cases when their deeds are revealed and enforcement actions start, they still might retreat behind the bastions of limited responsibility of their companies. In such situations public participation is a vital element of any progressive outcomes. In the present study we examine the efforts of J&E, a network of public interest environmental lawyers to contribute to moving out the European environmental liability systems from their stalemate position and enhance their effectiveness.
-
Actual Challenges of Delimitation of Continental Shelf on the Example of the Arctic
67-83Views:161The concept of continental shelf as an inherent right to coastal State has a history of almost a hundred year but its legal status has several gaps which need to be resolved in the forseeable future. Delimitation of continental shelf between States with adjacent or opposite coasts has been a problematic issue since the elaboration of the legal concept of continental shelf but the present essay aims to highlight some other problems emerging since the first application of Article 76 of UNCLOS. These legal problems are related to the procedure of establishing of the outer limits of continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles. The essay examines these legal problems and demonstrates the challenge caused to the Arctic continental shelf as an example.
-
The Role of Non-Governmental Organisations in the Enforcement of Environmental Liability
113-127Views:271Public participation is an essential part of the mechanism of dealing with environmental problems. Both the Aarhus Convention and Union law stipulate that citizens and environmental NGOs should be guaranteed access to justice that includes providing legal standing for environmental NGOs individuals and directly affected by a breach of environmental law. In accordance with the Environmental Liability Directive, persons adversely affected by environmental damage are entitled to ask the competent authorities to take action. However, there are major chellenges to the implementation of environmental legislation, faced by environmental NGOs in obtaining standing to bring legal challenges on environmental issues.
-
Protection of Marriage and Family in Central Europe
7-31Views:234It is no exaggeration to say that family plays a prominent role in our daily lives. This study therefore examines the constitutional and family law foundations of family protection in seven Central European countries. The study describes, among other things, the nature of family law legislation, the conceptual approach to family and marriage, the legal protection and solution of extramarital partnerships, such as de facto partnerships and registered partnerships, and the status of children in the countries studied.
-
The Challenges of Cryptocurrencies in Substantive Criminal Law and Procedure
79-98Views:909The legal status of cryptocurrencies is a gray area in most legal systems, although criminals increasingly abuse cryptocurrencies to fund criminal activities. The study analyses solely the criminal use of cryptocurrencies. For example money launderers have evolved to use cryptocurrencies in their operations, therefore legislative changes at EU level, or the uniform application of existing anti-money laundering regulations have been required. In a trend mirroring attacks on banks and their customers, cryptocurrency users and exchangers have become victims of cybercrimes themselves. Conventional crimes may be committed via cryptocurrencies such as fraud and extortion. Darknet criminal markets use cryptocurrencies as payment instruments since they offer better anonimity and some of them greater privacy. They are less traceable and their decentralised system challenges law enforcement.