March 7th, 2011

Former state president warns about possible mistakes around new constitution

Hungary’s former President Laszlo Solyom has warned authors of the new constitution to avoid mistakes that were made during drafting the 1989 basic law.

Imperfections in terms of “format or legitimacy” could allow for attacks against the new constitution, which might then “undermine its reputation and efficiency”, the ex-president said in a statement on Friday.

Meeting foreign experts attending a conference on the new constitution earlier in the day, Solyom insisted that the Constitutional Court should have the right to evaluate all new laws in light of the basic law. He added, however, that before being passed into law, bills should be evaluated by an expert body within parliament or the government rather than by the top court.

Solyom also said that it was necessary to include controls over the budget in the Constitution, but those rules would be “pointless unless the Constitutional Court has the power to enforce them.”

Topics
Share
Comments
The All Hungary Media Group is firmly committed to freedom of expression and therefore applies a mostly "hands off" approach to comment moderation. Comments left by readers represent their own views and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or beliefs of the staff, editors or owner of the All Hungary Media Group, who nonetheless reserve the right to remove comments that are off-topic or which moderators consider to constitute "hate speech." Also note that in order to prevent spam we generally close entries off to comments several days after publication.

Comments are closed.