During the last decades, several countries have entrenched a special subcategory of law, which is adopted by stricter procedural rules, than the requirements of the ordinary legislative process. These laws are enacted by qualified majority, by the consent of the two chambers of the legislation, they are subject to mandatory constitutional review before their promulgation, or additional safeguards are implemented in the ordinary legislative process. In this study, I compare the experiences of six European and twenty-three African legal systems, which provide several different frameworks of qualified law. My aim is to identify the most contested issues from the legal nature and the spread of qualified laws in Europe and Africa. Although the fact, that organic law has been introduced in a huge number of African countries, this field has not been researched in depth, several questions might be raised. The main conclusions of my study might be summarized as follows. Firstly, it shall be noted, that most organic laws of the world are adopted in Africa. Secondly, organic laws fail to fulfil their inherent function in Africa to promote the stability of the constitutional frameworks. Apart from this, it shall be also highlighted, that the scope of African organic laws is generally narrower, than the European ones. It is also worth-contemplating, that in Europe, a clear distinction shall be made between the institutional and the fundamental right protection aspect of qualified law, while the fundamental right aspect has been almost neglected in Africa. Finally, the dogmatic background of organic law in Africa is still to be elaborated.
Keywords: Qualified majority, organic law, legislation, African constitutional law, hierarchy of norms
Boldizsár Szentgáli-Tóth research assistant Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Center for Social Sciences, Institute of Legal Studies totboldi@gmail com
- 195/196 -
The aim of this paper is to examine the question: within which theoretical frameworks is the parliamentary representation of minorities examined in Hungary and in the international scientific literature nowadays? During this process, the most important concepts related to the topic are introduced. Such concepts are the concept of minorities, which is not understood as the same neither in Europe and in America, nor in Western Europe and East and Central Europe. Other concepts to be clarified are representation and nationality spokesperson. After all these, an overview of the most relevant Hungarian and international scientific literature related to the topic is provided as well. We also seek an answer to the question how different approaches are used by legal and political scientists, and we outline the different theoretical backgrounds applied by them. During this process we put a great emphasis on the theories of representation. Furthermore, a light will be shed on the question to what extent are the frameworks used by Hungarian and foreign authors, accordingly in Hungarian and English language journals different. We put a great emphasis on the examination of the question, to what extent are the internationally widely applied frameworks regarding the examination of relation between descriptive and substantive representation applied in Hungary. After we have seen, that this framework is used in Hungarian language literature mostly merely to examine the representation of women, we also outline, within which other theoretical frameworks besides this could be examined the parliamentary representation of minorities living in Hungary.
Keywords: minorities, representation, theories of representation, legislative agenda, state-of-art
Ágnes M. Balázs PhD student National University of Public Service, Doctoral School of Public Administration balazsagnes91@gmail.com
- 196/197 -
The entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon introduced several new procedural opportunities for the EU national parliaments. The paper summarizes the main experiences related to Protocol No 2 on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. Subsidiarity check constitutes a special parliamentary procedure as it provides the joint action of the currently 41 parliamentary chambers, however the joint action is limited to a well-defined 8-week period. In addition, the recent years have proved that annually a couple of legislative proposals submitted by the European Commission can be of joint interest for several national parliaments at the early stage of EU decision making procedure. The procedures of the Hungarian National Assembly concerning subsidiarity checks have been settled: on the initiative of the Committee on European Affairs, the plenary decides by derogation to the Rules of Procedure in order to meet the deadlines. The expiry of the 8-week deadline constitutes a limitation period, since reasoned opinion sent to the European Commission following the deadline is tackled as a contribution.
The strong coordination between parliamentary chambers represent a further necessary inherent factor, which was the case between the Visegrád Four parliaments concerning the amendment of the Dublin regulation, but included all the parliaments of the Member States joined in 2004 or later concerning the draft directive on the posting of workers. Nevertheless, this cooperation depends primarily on the subject-matter of the legislative proposal, as it was testified for example by the reasoned opinions adopted in view to certain elements of clean Energy for all Europeans package.
The yellow card procedure set up nearly 10 years ago, hasn't provided the turning point for EU national parliaments regarding their direct involvement to the EU decision making procedure. However, the most sensitive legislative proposals have been identified at the early stage of EU decision making procedure, and the EU issues have been made - more than before - part of the agenda of national Parliaments, including that of the Hungarian National Assembly.
Keywords: Subsidiarity check, Hungarian National Assembly and the European Union, yellow card procedure, reasoned opinion
Csaba Gergely Tamás visiting lecturer Catholic University of Pázmány Péter tamas.csaba.gergely@jak.ppke.hu
- 197/198 -
Sweden is a great example of social democratic welfare and political stability. For many decades some political institutions and elements of political culture (e.g. negative parliamentarism, neocorporatism, consensus seeking) made it possible for - usually minority, yet stable - governments to govern proactively. Although the foundations of the Swedish model were supported by all political actors, the economic crisis and the challenges presented by globalization led the governments to introduce changes to the welfare state. The converging policies of consecutive governments of the Social Democrats and their main rival Alliance contributed to the success of Swedish crisis management, while opened the door to the Sweden Democrats (SD), an anti-elitist and anti-immigration party, which portrays itself as the only credible opposition party.
A Jogkódex-előfizetéséhez tartozó felhasználónévvel és jelszóval is be tud jelentkezni.
Az ORAC Kiadó előfizetéses folyóiratainak „valós idejű” (a nyomtatott lapszámok megjelenésével egyidejű) eléréséhez kérjen ajánlatot a Szakcikk Adatbázis Plusz-ra!
Visszaugrás
