Abstract

This article showcases a recent decision of the Hungarian Constitutional Court regarding the State’s responsibility in a case concerning environmental damage which reaches back more than half a century. The reasoning attached to the decision contains important findings concerning the State’s responsibility, in part deduced from the scope of the right to a healthy environment giving way to the enforcement of individual compensation claims. However, the general validity of the constitutional argument is disputable and yet to be determined. It may be considered a new dimension of the State’s constitutional responsibility for environmental damage in light of the right to a healthy environment, with a significant long-term interpretative spectrum. Just as much as it may be interpreted as a way to achieve legal reparation in a particularly unfair and protracted individual legal affair.