Human Rights Protection and Traditional Churches in the System of National Cooperation in Hungary

Abstract

Hungary adopted its new Fundamental Law and new legislative framework on the legal status of churches, religious denominations and religious communities in 2011, as part of a number of constitutional changes leading to the dismantlement of democracy, rule of law and human rights protection. In relation to the new legislative framework of state-church relations, much assessment so far focused on how the installment of a “pluralist system of state churches” led to an institutional and partly moral establishment, jeopardizing and curtailing the religious freedom of non-established religious denominations. However, it has been less investigated how the “pluralist system of state churches” and related constitutional changes affected a number of human rights (e.g. the right to private and family life or the right to education) and the position of traditional churches, especially, in view of their autonomy. The paper intends to show that the close entanglement of the state and its traditional churches led to the deterioration of the protection of a number of human rights while it also undermined the autonomy of these churches.