Judicial protection and interpretation of the right to take part in a referendum – an overview of the jurisprudence of the Hungarian Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court

Abstract

This paper gives an overview of the jurisprudence of the Hungarian Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court regarding the right to take part in a referendum. This is a fundamental right of political participation, not unlike the right to vote and to stand as a candidate in parliamentary elections. It being a genuine fundamental right, the Constitutional Court interpreted its authentic meaning and stipulated the most important constitutional requirements related to this right. One of the most important requirements was the establishment of a system of remedies, where the final decision on the certification of a question proposed for a referendum must be taken by the Constitutional Court. Parliament fulfilled this legislative requirement and since 1998 the Constitutional Court has controlled the constitutionality of the decisions taken by the National Election Committee on the certification of the referendum questions proposed. The 2013 Act on referendum transferred this competence to the Supreme Court. Since then, the Constitutional Court shall only decide referendum-cases which were submitted with the so-called ‘direct constitutional complaint’, an extraordinary type of constitutional remedy. The present paper compares these two remedy systems introduced for the protection of the right to take part in a referendum.