Since March 2020, Hungary has almost continuously been under a type of special legal order, the state of emergency, which was first introduced to better protect against the COVID-19 epidemic and then in May 2022—following the amendment of the Fundamental Law—due to the Russian-Ukrainian war. Both the crises caused by the epidemic and the armed conflict in the neighbouring country were de facto limited not only to the health and migration-humanitarian fields, but the Government made use of the exceptional legislative powers of the special legal order in almost all areas of life. Economic regulation was no exception: in 2021, the Government capped the retail price of fuel, and from February 2022 onwards, the retail price of several basic foodstuffs (including flour, sugar, milk, chicken breast and other meats, and later eggs and potatoes). The aim of this paper is to show the limits of one of the most powerful state interventions in the economy: the price maximisation. This can basically be determined on the basis of the relevant case law of three fora of legal protection—the Hungarian Constitutional Court, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and the Court of Justice of the European Union. A comparison of the case law of the above-mentioned three courts also shows which legal protection mechanism is most effective against legislation restricting the free competition—at least in a period of special legal order.

The Centre for Parliamentary Research at the Ferenc Deák Faculty of State and Law of Széchenyi István University organized between 9-10. May 2024 for the ninth time this year an overview of Hungarian and international parliamentary research within the framework of the Day of Parliamentarianism conference series. On the first day of the two-day international conference "Parliaments in Europe", researchers shared their research results in Hungarian, while on the second day, attendants could listen to lectures in English.

During the Second World War, and thereafter until the end of the communist regime in 1989, a massive amount of private-ly owned works of art came into the possession of the Hungarian state. The ownership of the property thus collected was only par-tially clarified after the war. After the fall of communism, national-ized cultural property was subject to restitution laws, but restitution typically meant partial compensation. The aim of this article is to highlight the shortcomings that still characterize the restitution of cultural property held in public collections in Hungary. After summa-rizing the historical-legal situation pertaining to restitution measures in Central and Eastern Europe, we provide a comprehensive overview of the Hungarian legal environment in terms of restitution. The focus is on the restitution rules adopted in the 2010s that were intended to settle the possession of cultural property held in public collections. The roots of constitutional issues related to the regulation arise from and are reflected in the intermingling of private law and public law characteristics and guarantees. In the presentation of civil law disputes concerning the ownership rights of property held in public collections, we outline the characteristics of the Hungarian regula-tory framework regarding protected cultural property and the issues arising from their application. Finally, we provide an overview of the European Court of Human Rights’ jurisprudence on the protection of property rights and an assessment of Hungarian regulations before the Court. We claim that the lack of predictability and certainty of the latter authority’s proceedings may lead to human rights issues.

This study explores the requirement of sustainability in cultural heritage protection from the perspective of constitutionality. Following an indispensable overview of certain concepts relating to its subject it discusses the constitutional framework of legislation on cultural heritage protection. Through an analysis of the applicable legal regulations, it examines the way the Hungarian State can enforce the requirement of sustainability in the specific field of cultural heritage protection. This is, indeed a topical subject, particularly in view of the Act on the Sustainable Development of Certain Elements of Cultural Heritage (hereinafter: “Castles Act”) which was adopted by the Hungarian National Assembly on 12 December 2023, but was not promulgated pursuant to Decision 5/2024. (II. 6.) of Constitutional Court. Ensuring sustainability is, according to the explanatory memorandum attached to the Castles Act is one of the key aspect of the regulation, just like in the case of the act regulating the returning of cultural objects of disputed ownership, kept in public collections.