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Hungarian Yearbook of International Law and European Law

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Issue 1, 2017 Expand all abstracts
Editorial

Access_open Editor's Note

Authors Petra Lea Láncos and Réka Varga

Petra Lea Láncos

Réka Varga
Article

Access_open Global, International and State Dimensions of Migration

Problems of International/Domestic Enforcement

Authors Ielyzaveta Lvova
Author's information

Ielyzaveta Lvova
Associate professor, Odessa Regional Institute of Public Administration, National Academy for Public Administration, Office for the President of Ukrane, Odessa, Ukraine.

Balázs András Orbán
Head of Research at the Századvég Foundation, Director General of the Migration Research Institute, assistant lecturer at the National University of Public Service.

Barbara Bazánth
Junior Researcher

Gábor Kajtár
Assistant Professor at the Department of International Law, ELTE Law School (Budapest).
Article

Access_open The EU Migrant Quota Referendum in Hungary

The Legal Aspects of a Primarily Political Device

Authors László Komáromi
Author's information

László Komáromi
Associate Professor at Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Faculty of Law and Political Sciences.

Tamás Molnár
Legal research officer on asylum, migration and borders, European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Vienna; adjunct professor of public international law and EU migration law, Corvinus University of Budapest, Institute of International Studies.
Article

Access_open The Causes of Statelessness

Authors Blanka Ujvári
Author's information

Blanka Ujvári
PhD researcher at Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, Budapest.

Anita Rozália Nagy-Nádasdi
PhD researcher at Pázmány Péter Catholic University Faculty of Law and Political Sciences.

Snezana Trifunovska
Associate Professor at the Law Faculty, Radboud University, The Netherlands.

Tamás Lattmann
PhD, senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations (IIR) Prague, and associate professor of National University of Public Service (NKE), Budapest.
Article

Access_open The Legal Aspects of Turkey’s War against the PKK

A Case for Self-Defence within the Context of International Law

Authors Saeed Bagheri
Author's information

Saeed Bagheri
Max Weber Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Law Department of the European University Institute (EUI), Florence.

    One of the prominent international human rights issues of the past decades has been the question of responsibility for human rights infringements related to the activities of nongovernmental actors and especially transnational corporations (TNCs). This challenge is directly related to the continuous increase in foreign capital investments witnessed in the past fifty years. The phenomenon is faithfully characterised by the fact that there are 80,000 transnational companies and some ten times as many subsidiaries operating in today’s world economy whose impact on people’s everyday lives has been steadily growing. This study aims to outline certain correlations between this new phenomenon of the business world and internationally acknowledged human rights. Within this framework the study attempts to explore the essence of the dilemma and presents the international law attempts aimed to remedy the infringements. Finally, the study analyses the international law solution currently in force and then examines the perspectives of the latest efforts.
    Traditionally speaking, human rights and theworldof businessrepresent two fields of law that do not, or rarely do overlap. The main reason for this is that, while human rights provide protection from arbitrary legislation and state measures primarily, the activities of business actors, including enterprises of various legal forms, are governed by law. This leads to the traditional view that the two fields may mainly overlap if arbitrary legislation or public power measures restrict or violate basic human rights that by nature apply to economic actors as well.1 This interpretation is faithfully reflected also by the case law of international human rights forums like the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR),according to which the protection of the property rights and the good reputation of economic actors are essential not only for the benefit of the individual shareholders and employees but also for the healthy operation and development of the wider economy.2 In other words, according to the traditional view of the relationship of human rights and the business world some of the human rights facilitate the development of business players’ economic/business activity and protect their market operations from arbitrary state interventions and public power measures.
    This traditional view has, at the same time, been complemented by a series of new phenomena in the past fifty years that shed new light on the correlations between human rights and the business world as well ason the role and task of human rights in the world of business. All over the world the traditional theorem that human rights can exclusively provide protection from the arbitrariness of state measures or serve as a benchmark for state legislation and, accordingly, their role in the business world may ultimately be restricted to the protection of the market and its players, has been refuted increasingly frequently. This continuous change and expansion of the roles of businesses have primarily been triggered by the trade and capital liberalisation that has been characteristic for the past fifty years and has fit closely with the general globalisation process of the world economy. This liberalisation was both extremely enhanced in intensity and extended geographically by the political changes characterizing the early 1990s. The ultimate liberalisation of colonial empires and territories on the one hand and the collapse of the communist political and economic regimes on the other hand opened way to an exceptional economic integration. This phenomenon is characterised by several authors, including the historian and political scientist Henry Kissinger in his latest book, as a governance gap, i. e. a sort of regulatory hiatus.3 This expression implies that one of the major challenges faced by today’s international community, as a consequence of the globalisation of the world economy, is a hiatus in legal and especially international law regulations. What specific human rights infringements indicate this novel dilemma? What attempts have been made in the past fifty years to remedy these human rights infringements? What framework does international law currently offer to remedy these infringements? What future ambitions are envisaged in this field? This study gives an overview of this novel challenge of international law and explores these topical dilemmas of the field. First it gives a brief overview of the essence of the new phenomenon of human rights infringements (10.1), followed by the description of the international law efforts aimed to remedy the infringements (10.2). The study then outlines the international law regulations currently in force, meant to address this challenge, and finally it examines the perspectives of the latest initiative (10.3).
    The study aims to present a comprehensive picture of certain correlations between the world of business and internationally acknowledged human rights. By analysing the development of international law, it wishes to contribute to systemising this challenging public debate and to further considering the potential courses of the required reforms.


Lénárd Sándor
Constitutional Court of Hungary, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest.

    The Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution (“ATHP”), which has been signed by ASEAN member states, aims to overcome the annual haze problem in the region. Since the treaty came into force on 25 November 2003, the signatory nations urged Indonesia, the dominant contributor to the haze pollution, to ratify the agreement. After taking more than a decade to consider, Indonesia finally ratified the agreement in 2014, evincing its serious effort to prevent future forest fires. This study analyzes important issues of state responsibility and effective legal recourse to cope with the unresolved haze problem. Due to the ineffectiveness of ATHP, this study presents two effective legal measures: utilizing another relevant international treaty that offers an effective dispute settlement mechanism and building international awareness to stop using products from endangered forests.


Dodik Setiawan Nur Heriyanto
Lecturer at Faculty of Law, Islamic University of Indonesia.
Article

Access_open Sensitive Issues before the European Court of Justice

The Right of Residence of Third Country Spouses Who Became Victims of Domestic Violence, as Well as Same-Sex Spouses in the Scope of Application of the Free Movement Directive (Legal Analysis of the NA and Coman Cases)

Authors Laura Gyeney
Author's information

Laura Gyeney
Associate professor, Péter Pázmány Catholic University, Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, Department for European Law.
Article

Access_open The Challenges Posed by Multilingual EU Law

Autonomy, Translation and Databases

Authors Petra Lea Láncos
Author's information

Petra Lea Láncos
Researcher – Deutsches Forschungsinstitut für öffentliche Verwaltung (Speyer); Associate Professor – Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Faculty of Law (Budapest); Freelance interpreter (ACI) of the European Union.

    The Lisbon Treaty introduced the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), a brand new tool of transnational participatory democracy aiming to bring Europe closer to the people. Five years after the first ECI was lodged, we have yet to see an ECI that would pass the full procedure and end up as a proposal for a legal act. The European Commission (hereinafter: Commission) refused to register almost one third of the initiatives lodged on the basis that they fall manifestly outside the framework of the Commission’s powers to submit a proposal for a legal act. The organizers of the refused Minority SafePack ECI challenged the Commission’s decision before the Court of Justice of the European Union. The General Court approved the claims of the organizers of an ECI for the first time in this case. The General Court’s findings with regard to the Commission’s duty to give proper reasoning with respect to the refusal of an ECI may be a small but important step in achieving the goals of the ECI.
    In July 2013 the Citizens Committee of the ‘Minority SafePack – one million signatures for diversity in Europe’ European Citizens’ Initiative (MSPI) submitted its proposal to the European Commission. The aim of the proposal was to call upon the EU to improve the protection of persons belonging to national and linguistic minorities and strengthen cultural and linguistic diversity in the Union. The European Commission refused to register the initiative by its Decision C(2013) 5969 final of September 13, 2013 (hereinafter: the contested decision) on the grounds that it manifestly fell outside the powers of the Commission to submit a proposal for the adoption of a legal act of the European Union for the purpose of implementing the Treaties of the European Union (hereinafter: Treaties). As a result, the organizers could not even start collecting signatures for the MSPI. In November 2013, the decision of the Commission was brought before the General Court. The General Court with its judgment on February 3, 2017 approved the claims of the applicants and annulled the contested decision (hereinafter: Judgement). This was the first time the claims of the organizers of an ECI were approved by the Court of Justice of the European Union in relation to the rejection of the Commission’s decision.


Balázs Tárnok
PhD researcher at Pázmány Péter Catholic University Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, Budapest.

Tamás Kollarik
Member of the Media Council of the National Media and Infocommunications Authority, leading coordinator of the Hungarian Media Patronage Program since its foundation in 2011, visiting lecturer at Budapest Metropolitan University at the Institute of Motion Picture Arts.

Sándor Takó
Producer of Romis Film Group, visiting lecturer at Pázmány Péter Catholic University at the Department of Civil Law and the Budapest Metropolitan University at the Institute of Motion Picture Arts.
Article

Access_open Freedom of Religion at the Workplace

Background to the Ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Achbita and Bougnaoui Cases

Authors János Tamás Czigle
Author's information

János Tamás Czigle
PhD researcher at Pázmány Péter Catholic University Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, Budapest.

Márton Leó Zaccaria
Senior Lecturer, University of Debrecen Faculty of Law, Department of Agricultural Law, Environmental Law and Labour Law.
Article

Access_open Food Policy in the European Union and in Hungary

Authors Franciska Takó-Bencze and Sándor Takó
Author's information

Franciska Takó-Bencze
Trainee judge at the Budapest-Capital Regional Court.

Sándor Takó
Visiting lecturer of Pazmany Peter Catholic University at the Department of Private Law as well as at the Budapest Metropolitan University.

Endre Győző Szabó
Vice president of the National Authority of Data Protection and Freedom of Information.

Zsuzsanna Binczki
Legal officer, International Law Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary.

Andrea Gioia
Senior legal officer for the Office of Legal Affairs of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

Christine Byron
Lecturer in Law, Cardiff University.

Eszter Bodnár
Assistant professor that the Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Law.

Benedek Varsányi
Legal adviser at the Hungarian Constitutional Court.

Viktor Rák
Legal advisor of the Hungarian National Chamber of Civil Law Notaries.

Tamás Balogh
Legal advisor of the Hungarian National Chamber of Civil Law Notaries.
Article

Access_open Hate Crimes, Underpolicing and Institutional Discrimination

Lessons from Hungary

Authors András László Pap
Author's information

András László Pap
Research Chair, Head of Department for the Study of Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre for Social Sciences Institute for Legal Studies, Budapest, Hungary, SASPRO-Marie Curie Fellow, Slovak Academy of Sciences Institute for Sociology, Bratislava, Slovakia, Professor of Law, National Public Service University, Budapest, Hungary, Adjunct (Recurrent Visiting) Professor, Central European University, Nationalism Studies Program, Budapest, Hungary

Áron Péter Balogh
PhD student, University of Debrecen Marton Géza Doctoral School of Legal Studies.

Veronika Kéri
PhD student, Eötvös Loránd University Faculty of Law.

Zoltán Pozsár-Szentmiklósy
Assistant Professor, Eötvös Loránd University Faculty of Law.

Írisz E. Horváth
Junior assistant researcher, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, Budapest.

János Czigle
PhD researcher at Pázmány Péter Catholic University Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, Budapest

Enikő Virág
Lawyer-linguist at the Court of Justice of the European Union, Luxembourg.