Chapter 7: Hungary
(continued)
In the years following the Sofia Conference, the "honeymoon" between the government and the civil sphere ended. Environmentalists became more professional and at the same time more ambitious. The administration realized that NGOs could highlight the faults and shortcomings in the work of the central and local government (they have enough press publicity for this) and they could even win against the government in the courtrooms. The rapid development of government legal encouragement for the civil sphere has been halted dramatically in the past few years. Administrative legal branches other than environmental in its narrowest sense such as the construction law, mining law, water management law and similar areas, failed to follow the public participation patterns set forth in the Environmental Code. In addition, court decisions have failed to acknowledge that these strongly related legal fields are by their nature "environmental." In practice, this has meant that the liberal public participation rules governing environmental regulations have not been extended to these other areas.
Another negative aspect of the present manner of interpreting environmental laws is that the officers managing administrative environmental cases do not themselves have enough environmental insight. It could be said that they are not "green" enough. Officers in the environmental inspectorates are usually well-educated water engineers, geologists, biologists or other professionals, but all represent only their narrow professional views and very few of them have a broad, general ecological approach.
As almost everywhere else in the world, in Hungary constitutional rights to the environment are relatively new developments. The nature of environmental rights is still highly debated: many people believe the rights are little more than simple constitutional declarations, while many other people believe environmental rights are among the most important human rights, such as the right to life. Given this context, it will require a slow, step-by-step process to extend the scope and effect of these environmental constitutional rights to the stage where they can be tools for an internal law harmonization process.
The other side of this problem is the administrative law system, which has in practice been growing hostile toward environmental NGOs and which tends to interpret the scope of environmental regulations in the narrowest sense. Environmental NGOs must show strength, even more than they have so far. More strong cases are needed, and the courts must acknowledge the environmental nature of these matters and enforce the use of the related environmental regulations. Elements of international law developments could also be of help in this respect. Unfortunately, Statute Law courts (Continental) are much more reluctant to use foreign jurisprudence in their cases; it is even difficult to introduce international environmental law principles into Hungarian court practice. The precautionary principle or the public participation principle from the Rio Declaration is seldom accepted as an available legal tool.
In theory, the other branch of problems, the "greening" of the officers, has an easier solution. Environmental inspectorate officers should gradually develop the multi-disciplinary consciousness of environmentalists. They must learn to represent more than a narrow profession and expand their interests to anything that is life. Such an awareness would create a community feeling with the environmental movements and basic agreement on the leading principles of environmental protection. Naturally, environmentalists must also change in order to form alliances with environmental officers. The process is two-sided, and must include capacity building of NGOs and of the public in general.
