The president of Hungary’s Constitutional Court has approved the circulation of a newsletter in English to brief foreign experts about the court’s operations, its interpretations of the country’s fundamental law and its key decisions.
"The changes following the implementation of the fundamental law on January 1, 2012 need to be explained precisely and clearly,” Tamás Sulyok told MTI.
He added that it was important that the opinion of foreign experts and the media concerning Hungary “should reflect the real situation”.
Sulyok said that by introducing a real system for lodging constitutional complaints, for instance, the fundamental law has allowed the petitioners to directly appeal to the top court if their fundamental rights have been violated.
MTI states that In the past five years, the number of constitutional complaints has been increasing, and in 2016 the number was double than in 2013.
Sulyok pointed out that forty ambassadors to Hungary were briefed last month at a reception at the Constitutional Court’s headquarters about the body’s "role in the context of Hungarian democracy, its strong mandate in protecting and enforcing the country’s fundamental law, its powers and the process of electing its members on the basis of a political consensus."
He also said that during a meeting between Hungarian constitutional judges and their counterparts from central and eastern Europe, issues such as the right to the use of the mother tongue and access to legal representation were on the agenda with top judges from Romania, Slovakia and Serbia.