Debating the Hungarian Constitution at the EUI

FLORENCE, ITALY – Participants and observers of the Hungarian constitution making process will come to the EUI to discuss the making of the Hungarian Constitution. The meeting is scheduled March 2, 2012, at Teatro of the Badia Fiesolana from 3:30 pm to 6 pm.

MEP Jozsef Szajer, vice-chair of the European People’s Party and chairman of the group that drafted the New Hungarian Constitution; MEP Zita Gurmai, Vice-Chair of The Committee on Constitutional Affairs of the European Parliament; Professor Gabor Halmai, Director of the Institute of Political and International Studies (Budapest) and former chief counselor to the President of the Constitutional Court of Hungary; Professor Andras Jakab, Associate Professor at the Department of Constitutional Law of the Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest, editor of the Commentary of the Hungarian Constitution will be among the discussants.

The roundtable discussion will focus on fundamental issues linked to the Hungarian Constitution: the Fundamental Law of Hungary that went into force on 1 January 2012 has attracted a great deal of criticism and debate worldwide. Hailed by its proponents as the act that completed the transition to democracy, it was criticized by others as an undertaking that ends constitutional democracy in Hungary by removing checks on the power of the government and putting virtually all power into the hands of the current governing party for the foreseeable future.

 The debate is organized by the Department of Political and Social Sciences and the European Union Democracy Observatory (EUDO) of the EUI. For more information read here.

The European University Institute (EUI) was set up in 1972 by the six founding Member States of the European Communities to provide advanced academic training to doctoral researchers and to promote research at the highest level. It opened its doors to the first researchers in 1976. It’s possible reach all sites on the EUI campus, except Villa Salviati, by taking bus 7 from Piazza San Marco, the center of Florence.