In the first year of the First World War, several cases of war transport abuse came to light in Hungary, which were of great social interest and caused extremely significant material and moral damage. One of the largest of these was the so-called baized fraud case. The special feature of these cases is that some of the defendants are military personnel, while others have civilian status. In Hungary, the practice has developed that both categories of persons are tried by military courts. This study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the historical facts of the case, the legal context of the case and the decisions of the courts at first and second instance.

The last two decades have seen a dramatic increase in international migration, with Europe experiencing a significant influx of individuals from developing countries, especially the Near-East. This phenomenon has led to a spike in irregular migration into the European Union, reaching peak levels in the past four years, profoundly affecting both the EU and its individual member states. Hungary, facing a considerable influx of migrants in 2015, took a decisive political step by adopting specific criminal measures aimed at mitigating this irregular migration. This move resulted in notable modifications to the Hungarian legal framework, especially concerning criminal law and procedures. The Hungarian Criminal Code was expanded to include three novel offenses: the destruction of the border fence, illegal crossing of the border fence, and interference with the construction of the border fence. Furthermore, the general part of the Criminal Code underwent revisions to thoroughly address the issue of irregular migration. This study seeks to explore the adjustments made to Hungarian criminal law in response to irregular migration, focusing on the introduction of new legal definitions and examining criminal statistics from 2015 to 2017. It is important to note that the analysis is based solely on official criminal data from 2015 to 2017, as figures for 2018 were not available at the time due to ongoing consolidation by the Unified Hungarian Criminal Statistics of Investigation Authorities and Prosecution.

From 2015, migratory pressures put a heavy burden on EU countries. In 2015, Hungary took a new approach by building a border fence and creating criminal legal rules to protect it. This study aims to assess these measures in the EU sphere. Our research was based on EU (FRONTEX) and national (Prosecutor General’s Office information) data and assessed the Hungarian solution in the light of the migration policy of other Member States located along the main migratory routes. The data show: (1) the criminal law has no substantive effect, and (2) the law enforcement tools are effective. Moreover, the domestic data also show that Hungary is not consistent in its policy and has preferred law enforcement tools to criminal legal tools in the past few years, which violates the basic principles of criminal law: the principle of legality and the principle of ultima ratio.