Top court head says foreign opinion-formers need clear picture

Hungary’s Constitutional Court is launching a newsletter in English to brief foreign experts about the court’s operations, its interpretations of the country’s fundamental law and its key decisions, the court’s president, Tamás Sulyok, told MTI in an interview on Sunday.

“The changes following the implementation of the fundamental law on January 1, 2012 need to be explained precisely and clearly,” Sulyok said, adding that it was important that the opinion of foreign experts and the media concerning Hungary “should reflect the real situation”.

By introducing a real system for lodging constitutional complaints, for instance, the fundamental law has allowed the petitioners to directly appeal to the top court if their fundamental rights have been violated, he said. In the past five years, the number of constitutional complaints has been steadily increasing, and in 2016 was double the number in 2013, he added.