New submissions to the Committee of Ministers in the Baka v. Hungary case

The European Court of Human Rights found in its judgment in the Baka v. Hungary case that the premature termination of the applicant’s mandate as the President of the Supreme Court through ad hominem legislative measures was prompted by the views and criticisms that he had publicly expressed in his professional capacity about certain legislative steps threatening judicial independence. This violated not only Mr. Baka’s right of access to a court and freedom of expression, but exerted a chilling effect also on other Hungarian judges.

The HHC has been following the implementation of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the Baka v. Hungary case for years, and has submitted multiple communications to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (in its role of supervising the execution of the Court’s judgments) regarding the non-implementation of the judgment.

In our latest communications (one of them submitted jointly with Amnesty International Hungary), we demonstrated that the Hungarian authorities simply refuse to implement the judgment, and have failed to take any measures at all to implement previous recommendations by the Committee of Ministers. In addition, new developments indicated further deterioration of the independence and integrity of the judiciary both from the perspective of lack of respect for the right to the freedom of expression of judges and lack of safeguards against undue termination of judicial mandates. Therefore, we asked the Committee of Ministers to adopt an interim resolution condemning the lack of progress.

The communications submitted are available here:

• Joint communication by Amnesty International Hungary and the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (January 2022)
• Communication by the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (February 2022)