‘Eliminating Conservation’? The Re-Regulation of Hungarian Administrative Procedure in the Act on General Administrative Procedure

Abstract

The chapter analyses the resilience of the general rules of administrative procedural law in Hungary. Traditional doctrinal analysis, historical comparison and the sociology of legislation are applied to show the extent to which legislative transformation reflects the challenges of the socioeconomic environment after 2010. The chapter argues that the objectives declared by the legislator are not reflected properly in the legislative text. In the case of most of the legislative changes, neither the jurisprudential nor the sociological analysis can identify the expected positive impact. Legislative declarations concerning elevated public access or simplifications of the administrative procedure are in sharp contrast with the fact that, due to the reform of administrative procedure, review is inaccessible to the majority of clients. While the reform-related arguments that are officially put forward advertise the advantage of judicial legal protection, access to this and other forms of review is minimal; the advantage is not supported by statistical data.