Statutory Environment
Statutory Environment
The Constitution of the Republic of Hungary states that the minorities living in Hungary are constituent components of the state. The Constitution guarantees the minorities the right to collective participation in public affairs, the nurturing of their own culture, the widespread use of their native language, education in their native language, and the right to use their names in their own language. Subsection (2) of Section 32/B of the Constitution and Act LIX of 1993 provide for the institution of a parliamentary commissioner to protect the rights of national and ethnic minorities. The minorities ombudsman is responsible for investigating or enforcing the investigation of any kind national or ethnic minority rights abuse that comes to its attention and initiating general and individual measures in order to remedy it.
In 1993 Parliament passed Act LXXVII on the Rights of National and Ethnic Minorities, which establishes individual and collective minority rights in the areas of self-government, the use of language, public education, and culture. Among the collective rights, the act states that the minorities have the right to form local and national self-governments.
Minority points of view are increasingly taken into consideration in the wording of legislation passed in the Republic of Hungary over the last few years, and contemporary acts have been created, which are fully in line with today’s requirements regarding the guarantee of minorities’ basic constitutional rights. Thus, for example, the Act on Radio and Television Broadcasting states that the public service media have a compulsory responsibility to prepare programs presenting the culture and life of the minorities and to broadcast them in the native languages. An amendment (1996) to the Act on the Criminal Code established the prosecution of the criminal forms of racial discrimination.
While Members of Parliament belonging to the different minorities sit on the benches of some of the parliamentary parties, the question of guaranteed preferential representation for the minorities in Parliament has remained unresolved for some time; it is a matter which regularly appears on the agendas of the Parliament and the Government.
Hungary was admitted as a member of the Council of Europe on 6 November 1990; this date also marks the moment Hungary signed the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. It was ratified on 5 November 1992. In 1995, Hungary ratified two key documents of the Council of Europe regarding minority protection: the Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Laws in Hungary concerning the minorities are in accordance with the two international conventions above, and indeed in certain areas they actually provide broader rights to the minorities resident in the country. Hungary has undertaken to implement the optional regulations contained in Chapter III of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in respect of the Croatian, Slovakian, German, Serb, Romanian, and Slovene languages. The Hungarian Government presented a national report on the implementation of the two international conventions to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe.
