BackCalled upon to do so by a civil society organisation more than one hundred complainants asked the Ombudsman to file an application with the Constitutional Court because, according to them, the regulation does not exclude ‘the decisive influence of the governing coalition, which possesses a two-thirds majority in Parliament, on the Media Council and therewith on the press, and thereby restricts the freedom of expression and of the press in a way that is contrary to the Fundamental Law’.
After reviewing the problems indicated in the complaint, Ombudsman Máté Szabó has come to the conclusion that several provisions of the Media Law which regulates the election and the termination of the mandate of the President and of the members Hungarian Media Council, taken together, are meaningless and inapplicable. The internal incoherencies of the text could infringe the requirements of the rule of law and of legal certainty.
On the basis of the Act it can happen for example that for a transitional period the Media Authority has two presidents in parallel so that, pursuant to the regulation, the powers of the presidents are unclear. The Ombudsman has also drawn the attention of the Constitutional Court to the fact that the lack of clarity of the relevant regulation, beyond infringing the requirements of the rule of law, may also paralyse the operation of the Media Council, which may indirectly constitute an infringement of the obligation of the State to protect the rights related to the freedom of expression.
Therefore, the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights has initiated that the Constitutional Court review and annul those provisions of the Media Law which relate to the mandate of the President of the Media Council and are contrary to the principle of the rule of law.
Source: Commissioner for Fundamental Rights
