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Editor’s Pick

von EVA MARIA BREDLER

Copyright: EPV

Träumen wir nicht alle von Unabhängigkeit? In Ruhe gelassen werden, ein Leben in unserer eigenen Zeit. In ihrem visionären Roman „Die Wand“ von 1963 hinterfragt Marlen Haushofer diese Vorstellung individueller Freiheit. Der Roman besteht aus den Aufzeichnungen einer Frau, die sich bei einem Bergausflug plötzlich allein auf der Welt wiederfindet: Während ihre Cousine und deren Mann abends ausgehen, bleibt sie mit dem Hund in der Jagdhütte zurück. Als das Paar am nächsten Morgen nicht zurückgekehrt ist, macht sich die Frau auf ins Tal – und trifft auf die titelgebende unsichtbare Wand. Der Hund stößt sich die Schnauze daran blutig. Wie unter einer Taucherglocke ist die Frau vom Rest der Welt abgetrennt. Wir begleiten sie, wie sie das Land bestellt, und ihr die verbliebenen Tiere zur Familie werden: ein Hund, eine Katze, eine Kuh. Ich habe das Buch zum ersten Mal während der Pandemie gelesen und entdecke jedes Mal Neues in Haushofers nüchterner Prosa, die mit stiller Kraft unsere Beziehungen zur Natur und zu uns selbst entfaltet.

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Die Woche auf dem Verfassungsblog

zusammengefasst von EVA MARIA BREDLER

Nicht nur auf internationaler Ebene ist der Klimaschutz in Bewegung, wie Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger, Tejas Rao und Markus Gehring in unseren fünf Fragen gezeigt haben. Ein weiteres Verfahren mit potenziell globalen Auswirkungen spielt sich derzeit in Australien ab. In Denman dem ersten Klimafall vor Australiens oberstem Gericht, wird verhandelt, ob bei der Genehmigung einer Kohlemine auch sogenannte Scope-3-Emissionen – die Treibhausgasemissionen, die beim Verbrennen der geförderten Kohle entstehen – hätten berücksichtigt werden müssen. Rechtlich geht es dabei vor allem um die Frage, ob globale Emissionen als wahrscheinliche Umweltauswirkungen „in der betroffenen Region” im Sinne des australischen Planungsrechts gelten können. Warum das Gericht diese Frage bejahen sollte, zeigen NICK SCOTT, HARJ NARULLA, NICHOLAS YOUNG, MICHAEL YOUNG, MICHAEL BURGER, HARRO VON ASSELT, JESSICA WENTZ und MARIA ANTONIA TIGRE (EN).

Währenddessen hat das Europäische Parlament der vorgeschlagenen EU-Rückführungsverordnung zugestimmt, die Abschiebehaft massiv ausweiten würde. RHEA KUMMER (EN) nennt das die „ICE-ifizierung der EU-Migrationspolitik und die faktische Kriminalisierung von Menschen auf der Flucht“ und zeigt auf, wo die Verordnung gegen die EMRK und die EU-Grundrechtecharta verstoßen würde.

Italien versucht schon länger, die EU-Migrationspolitik auszuweiten – nämlich territorial: auf See abgefangene Migrant:innen sollen auf albanischem Territorium unter ausschließlich italienischer Hoheitsgewalt bearbeitet werden. Generalanwalt Emiliou hat nun seine Schlussanträge in Sedrata vorgelegt – dem ersten von drei beim EuGH anhängigen Verfahren zum Italien-Albanien-Protokoll. JONAS BORNEMANN und ELEONORA FRASCA (EN) analysieren die Schlussanträge und erläutern, wie der EuGH die unionsrechtliche Schwelle für die Offshore-Bearbeitung von Migrationsfällen absenken könnte.

In einer weiteren lang erwarteten Entscheidung hat der EuGH Ungarns Anti-LGBTQ-Gesetz für unvereinbar mit dem Unionsrecht erklärt – erstmals unter isolierter Anwendung von Art. 2 EUV. LEA DIRKSEN und NOAH THOMAS SEYLLER (DE) zeigen, welche Maßstäbe der EuGH in Kommission gegen Ungarn für den „magischen Dreiklang“ von Wesensgehalt, Würde und Werten entwickelt – und wo die Suche noch am Anfang steht.

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Die USA scheuen dagegen verrechtlichte Werte. DUNCAN HOSIE (EN) wirft einen kritischen Blick auf die Anti-Orthodoxie-Rhetorik des Supreme Court. Seit Barnette (1943) gilt „Orthodoxie“ im amerikanischen Verfassungsrecht als Inbegriff staatlicher Indoktrinierung – also genau das, was das First Amendment verbietet. Justice Gorsuch berief sich darauf zuletzt in Chiles v. Salazar, um ein Verbot bestimmter Konversionstherapien zu kippen. Hosie hält die Rhetorik für unscharf: „Orthodoxie” sei ein formbarer Begriff, der jeweils das bestätige, was der Sprecher ohnehin schon entschieden habe – und dabei verdecke, dass nicht jede Rechtsnorm Indoktrination ist.

Die Frage, was der Staat legitim regulieren darf – und wie –, beschäftigt auch Frankreich. Ein neues Gesetz soll das bisherige sogenannte schwedische Modell durch die vollständige Entkriminalisierung von Sexarbeit ersetzen. Das Besondere: Sexarbeiter:innen waren selbst daran beteiligt, den Entwurf zu formulieren. MARIE-SOPHIE PETERS (EN) sieht darin ein Modell für inklusivere Demokratie und lobt den Entwurf als differenziert und durchdacht.

Indien ringt damit, Demokratie in einem nationalen Sinne inklusiv zu gestalten: Als bevölkerungsreichste Demokratie der Welt muss Indien das Spannungsverhältnis von Demokratie und Föderalismus lösen. SARATH PILLAI (EN) zeigt, dass die verfassungs- und parteipolitischen Debatten im kolonisierten Indien dieselbe Spannung kannten – und damit Indiens bis heute uneingelöstes Versprechen des Föderalismus prägten.

Auch Europa steht vor einem uneingelösten Versprechen: Seit Trumps zweiter Amtszeit ist auf die schützende US-amerikanische Hand kein Verlass mehr. Nun will das ALCIDE-Projekt die Europäische Verteidigungsgemeinschaft wiederbeleben – was vor über siebzig Jahren an der Ratifikation Italiens und Frankreichs scheiterte. Robert Schütze hat die Idee letzte Woche als „rechtliche Phantasie“ abgetan. Als federführende Juristen des ALCIDE-Projekts haben FEDERICO FABBRINI und FRANZ C. MAYER (EN) eine Replik geschrieben.

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Zum 01.09.2026 sind am Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht in Heidelberg

drei PostDoc-Stellen sowie drei Promotionsstellen
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im Team von Professor Dr. Helmut Aust zu besetzen.

Themenschwerpunkte seiner Forschung am MPIL sind das Kooperationsvölkerrecht in antagonistischen Zeiten, empirisches Außenverfassungsrecht sowie die Geographien des Völkerrechts.

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Diese Woche haben wir das Symposium „On Law and Politics in the Hungarian Transition“ (EN) gestartet. Im Nachgang zu einer Konferenz am Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht geht das Symposium der Frage nach, wie ein verfassungsrechtlicher Neuanfang in Ungarn nach Tiszas historischem Sieg aussehen kann. Zum fünften Mal in Folge hat die Gewinnerpartei eine Zweidrittelmehrheit errungen. Für BEÁTA BAKÓ war die Magie dieser Supermehrheit von Anfang an Quacksalberei: Sie garantierte nie Kompromiss. PÁL SONNEVEND spricht sich gegen eine neue Verfassung aus. ADAM BODNAR zieht Lehren aus Polen: Es genüge nicht, nur die Institutionen wiederaufzubauen – echte Rechenschaft brauche entschlossene Staatsanwält:innen und geduldige Wähler:innen. ANDRÁS JAKAB findet blinde Flecken im aktuellen Diskurs über Transitional Justice und skizziert, wie ein Übergangssystem für Ungarn aussehen müsste.

Ob Verfassungs- oder Klimareparatur: Die Welt braucht kollektives Handeln, Courage und Kreativität. Wie Vanuatus Klimaminister Ralph Regenvanu Anfang des Monats sagte, war die ursprüngliche UN-Resolution „ein kollektiver Akt multilateralen Vertrauens, dass das Recht uns durch die Klimakrise steuern kann“. Der IGH hat dieses Vertrauen einstimmig geteilt. Hoffen wir, dass sich die Staaten davon anstecken lassen.

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Das war’s für diese Woche.

The post „Wenn die Juristen kommen, wird es ernst“ appeared first on Verfassungsblog.

The future of human rights is here. That is, at least according to member states of the Council of Europe who today, in Chișinǎu, Moldova, have agreed on a new Declaration to reform the European Convention of Human Rights. In the UK, the Government has already argued that the document will future-proof the Convention and thereby end speculations about UK withdrawal from it. If true, that is quite an achievement.

The reform process, which was started in September 2025 by the Danish and Italian governments, has resulted in a new “interpretative declaration” – a document seeking to instruct the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to allow states more flexibility in sending foreign criminals back to their countries, even when conditions are harsh, and in reducing the protections of family life. The document also asks the Court to provide room to states for “innovative solutions” to migration, including transit hubs.

The document runs to many pages – a result of the fact that each country has brought its own set of demands. Denmark insisted on the inclusion of limits on the protection of family life in expulsion cases. The UK and Italy proposed a reinterpretation of the prohibition of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment to ensure that foreign criminals can easily be sent back to their countries. Other countries have been focused on the instrumentalization of migration, the mass arrivals of migrants and the resulting problems in processing migration cases within the limits of European human rights law.

A Pick-and-Mix Declaration

As a result, as documents go, the Chișinǎu Declaration is a mixed bag: it contains a pick-and-mix of instructions to the Court on how it should reduce the current protections, relativize absolute provisions, and give states more leeway to do what they wish in various contexts. The document is also marred by repetitions, inconsistencies and contradictions. The independence of the Court is underlined in multiple places, whilst states provide strict instructions as to how the Convention should be understood in other places. In this regard, the declaration is a window into how diplomacy works when there is no agreement – each state brought its own shopping list, but there was no consensus, no uniform European policy on migration.

So, does the document as a whole really reform the Convention? The declaration only takes effect when it is used by the European Court of Human Rights in its interpretation of the relevant clauses of the Convention. But the Court has to have the opportunity to do so. Given that only 1,5% of the Court’s case law relates to migration, and that all of these cases have to traverse through domestic court first, we are likely to wait for years before an opportunity arises for the Court to give life to the Declaration. States could have, for example, asked the Court for an advisory opinion on protections in the field of migration, but they chose not to do so. Perhaps this is then mostly a signalling exercise to the Court to back off.

The problem with the current approach is that it changes nothing at the domestic level, where most migration decisions are made. That is, it will change nothing unless states themselves take (preemptive) action. Denmark, for example, has legislated in detail on how to handle expulsion cases and also floated a new law that builds on the new, stricter rules stemming from the Declaration. This means that Denmark is seeking to give effect to the Declaration even before it is applied at international level, reaping the fruit even before the tree has blossomed. The UK may wish to train domestic judges on the adoption of the Declaration and its potential to be used to interpret the Convention domestically. But such expectations might be premature: judges can reject such efforts as interfering with their independent function or underline the mere fact that the Declaration is not binding and has no force in law. Without legislative action, what was agreed at international level is then unlikely to have any bite at home.

Even when a case gets to Strasbourg, the question is whether the Declaration will have the desired effect, particularly as concerns the envisaged softening of the prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment. Last week, the UN Committee Against Torture expressed concerns that efforts to reform the Convention were undermining the absolute nature of the prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment. It criticised attempts to introduce a balancing exercise into the process of assessing whether a case amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment. States, it urged, should refrain from such attempts.

The Strasbourg Court is undoubtedly aware of the political context in which it functions and is likely to heed some of the instructions of states, particularly as concerns limits on the protection of family life in expulsion cases, a path the Court has already started walking down. The instructions concerning the prohibition of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment are different. Here, the Declaration tells the Court how to do its job, and it does so in respect of an absolute right, whose interpretation the Court considers to lie at the core of its function. What the future holds is thus still to be determined.

Chișinău as a Political Signal

Getting too legal and technical might, however, miss the real point of the Chișinǎu Declaration. The Declaration might better be understood as a stepping stone to hardening domestic stances on migration and creating a common political position. A window into a political reality where many governments fear that being soft on migration might lead to their demise at the next election. And a window into a political reality where human rights are treated as limitations on government action rather than individuals’ fundamental rights worthy of protection.

The post Shopping Lists and Steppingstones appeared first on Verfassungsblog.

This is the fifth election in a row in which a party has gained a two-thirds majority in Hungary’s unicameral parliament – and the first time it is not Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, but the newly emerged centre-right Tisza party led by Péter Magyar. A two-thirds majority has long been the magic of Hungarian politics. Namely, it means domestically unlimited power. Now, the new government will have all the means to change the fundamental constitutional setting in Hungary: to amend the constitution (or even adopt a new one), to appoint constitutional judges and other state officials, and to adopt and amend so-called “cardinal laws”. But the magic of the two-thirds majority is based on an assumption that has turned out to be a lie over the years: that such a special majority guarantees compromise. As a first step towards a truly functioning pluralist democracy, it is time to disenchant the two-thirds majority. In this blog post, I will show why and how.

The reasons for Tisza’s landslide victory are complex, but there are at least two obvious sets of voter motivations. One is practical, including economic difficulties, systemic corruption, and, alongside these, dysfunctional public services. The other is principled: Hungarians realised that after 16 years of rule-of-law backsliding under Fidesz rule, the country was standing on the brink of open dictatorship, and that this election was the last moment at which this could be reversed. That is why the most important task of the new Tisza government is to prevent Hungary from reaching this point again. The disenchantment of the “magical” two-thirds majority is a crucial element here. While a few of the most important decisions should be subject to stricter and more complex majority requirements, the vast majority of decisions currently requiring a two-thirds majority should instead be regulated by simple-majority legislation. These are the so-called cardinal laws.

What are cardinal laws and what were they used for?

Cardinal laws have existed since the democratic transition, although under the name of “two-third laws”. The original idea behind these special laws was to secure political compromise when regulating some crucial constitutional matters, such as the justice system, elections, parties, constitutional court, citizenship and so on. When Fidesz came to power in 2010, they kept these laws, renamed them as “cardinal law” and, additionally, they qualified several policy issues as cardinal as well, for example migration and asylum, pensions, or certain taxation rules, raising the number of cardinal laws above thirty.

Now, as two-thirds parliamentary majorities seem to have become the new normal in Hungary, it is time to realise that the rationale behind the magical two-thirds majority requirement has been a lie. Just like cardinal laws, since 2010 constitution drafting and amending does not require compromise anymore. Fidesz knew that but showed how seriously they took the need for compromise: they did not raise the majority requirements neither for cardinal laws, nor for constitution making and amending, but used their two-thirds legitimation to ignore any meaningful dialogue with the opposition.

The consecutive Fidesz-governments instead cemented their random policy preferences in cardinal laws expecting that a future government with simple majority would not be able to change them. Moreover, they also codified controversial fundamental rights restrictions in cardinal laws: this was especially apparent in the year preceding the 2026 general election. For instance, under the rhetoric of fighting “foreign agents” and combined with an amendment of Article G) of the Fundamental Law the justice minister was empowered in cardinal law (§§ 9/B and 9/C, inserted in 2025) to suspend the Hungarian citizenship of Hungarians who also hold the citizenship of a third country, if they “pose a threat to the public order”. Or, municipal communities received the right via cardinal law to determine who may settle in the locality and under what conditions. This is particularly controversial given that the meaningful competences and financial autonomy of local governments have drastically been cut by the Fidesz-governments.

Learning to make compromises without cardinal laws

The reason why two-thirds majority laws were perceived as the primary guarantee for compromise lies in the Hungarian electoral system. Since the democratic transition, Hungary has had a mixed system, where roughly half of MPs are elected in single-member constituencies (SMCs) according to majority voting, while the rest are elected from party lists under proportional representation: each voter has two votes, one for the candidate in their district and the other for the party list.

After coming to power in 2010, the Fidesz supermajority made some tricky changes to the system to make it more majoritarian and less proportional, and to favour the strongest party: the second round was abolished in the SMCs, so that a mandate could also be won by relative majority in the first round, and winning candidates also received compensatory votes on their party lists. Such an electoral system provides stable majorities, and it also helped Fidesz repeatedly turn its simple parliamentary majority into a two-thirds majority over the years. What they did not anticipate was that, at some point, Fidesz might no longer be the strongest party. Now it is the new strongest party, Tisza, that can benefit from these electoral rules.

Under these circumstances, where a governing party has no need to cooperate with others – not only in ordinary legislation but even on key constitutional issues – it is no wonder that Hungarian political culture has increasingly been characterised by deepening divisions, while the pursuit of compromise has practically disappeared. It is indeed desirable to encourage politics, especially at the legislative level, to seek compromise. However, as demonstrated above, cardinal laws have proven to be unsuitable instruments for that.

Instead, what would guarantee compromise (and, along with it, an improvement in political culture) is a shift towards a more proportional electoral system, where even a simple majority requires compromise within a governing coalition. Such a scenario would also make cardinal laws unnecessary. At this point, it is worth recalling that a two-thirds majority in parliament practically means unlimited power in the Hungarian constitutional setup. Therefore, one should always be wary when a single party holds such a majority alone – be it the national-populist Fidesz or the centrist-technocratic Tisza. The biggest test of the democratic commitment of the new Tisza government will be whether it is willing to dispel the magic of the two-thirds majority, which it also holds, by abolishing cardinal laws and creating a new, more proportional electoral system.

In a proportional setting, coalition governments will become the norm, and ordinary legislation will also require compromise between multiple parties. After the initial difficulties, such an arrangement could help transform hostility between parties, at least in part, into a more constructive form, and it would also have an important benefit for voters. They would no longer be forced to vote tactically, holding their noses, but could instead vote for their preferred party, thus allowing Hungary to move towards genuine democratic pluralism.

Whether or not electoral reform ultimately takes place, the large number of two-thirds laws makes little sense in either case. At the same time, precisely in order to protect the foundations of the democratic system from a potential Fidesz-rule 2.0, narrowly defined exceptions are needed. Moreover, the very concept of cardinality should also be reconsidered, so that special majority requirements are not defined solely within parliament, in terms of the number of MPs, but also involve additional sources of democratic legitimacy beyond parliament.

Matters that indeed require enhanced compromise – beyond parliament alone

First and foremost, the 15 constitutional amendments adopted in the 14 years since the entry into force of Hungary’s not-so-new Fundamental Law – many of them controversial and driven by the party-political interests of Fidesz – demonstrate that the current two-thirds threshold for constitutional change (and for adopting a new constitution) is too easily reached. Even if the electoral system were to be reformed to make it more proportional, decisions of this magnitude should be subject to more demanding safeguards. These need not be limited to higher parliamentary thresholds; they could also include confirmatory referendums or the establishment of a separate body, such as a constitutional assembly, to play a contributory role.

As for cardinal laws, three key areas stand out where genuinely enhanced compromise among political forces remains essential.

To avoid what has happened over the past fifteen years – namely, that the Constitutional Court has been rendered dysfunctional or even weaponised by the ruling party – the rules governing its composition and operation should be regulated at a higher level, but in a way that ensures genuine compromise. In the event of a switch to a proportional electoral system, the current two-thirds majority will probably suffice; if the system remains unchanged, however, the threshold should be raised further, for example to four-fifths, with the detailed rules designed so that it is not in the parliamentary opposition’s interest to boycott the appointment process. Involving actors beyond parliament in the appointment of constitutional judges should also be considered.

What I wrote four years ago still holds: the main problem with the Hungarian constitution is not its text, but the fact that it does not function. And it has not functioned largely because of those who were meant to operate the constitutional system – above all, the constitutional judges. If the independence and proper functioning of the Constitutional Court are restored, there is no need to designate another twenty or thirty laws as cardinal, not even crucial ones such as laws on the judiciary or the parliament. In that case, given that the fundamental principles of democracy and the rule of law are codified at the constitutional level, simply enforcing the constitution is enough.

More generally, if the Constitutional Court functions normally again, it will be capable of protecting the rule of law and institutional integrity. What I do not trust it to protect, however, are certain core aspects of popular sovereignty. That is why laws governing parliamentary elections and the competences of local governments should be safeguarded so that their adoption – and any substantial, fundamental changes to them – are subject to requirements beyond a simple parliamentary majority.

As a first step, the electoral system should be made more proportional, and the competences of local governments – overhauled during the Fidesz era – should be restored, together with the necessary financial autonomy. These arrangements should be put in place together with safeguards that require direct approval by those affected, and the same safeguards should apply to any future changes. This should take the form not of higher parliamentary thresholds, but of external approval mechanisms: citizens should be able to approve electoral laws in a referendum, and any moves toward centralisation should be conditional on the approval of a certain proportion of local and/or territorial governments, depending on the subject.

Such safeguards would also require a constitutional amendment, not only in terms of the legislative process and the actors involved but also because the current framework is highly restrictive regarding referendums: it treats electoral laws as excluded subjects and sets a high, fifty percent validity threshold.

The main lesson of the past sixteen years is that institutions can be captured all too easily by the magical two-thirds majority. Even if this parliamentary supermajority is finally disenchanted, the most effective democratic safeguards will not lie in institutions alone, but also – alongside them – in the people themselves. Counter-majoritarian checks should be complemented by additional tools to keep elected governments under control; tools that carry more immediate democratic legitimacy and are rooted in majoritarian logic.

It is a relief that Hungary has moved beyond the threat of autocratisation. The task now is to counter autocratic populism in the future. This requires drawing on multiple layers of democratic legitimacy and popular sovereignty as checks on the elected majority – whether two-thirds or a simple majority – after so many years of populists misappropriating the authority of the people.

The post The Big Lie of Two Thirds Majority appeared first on Verfassungsblog.