The watchdog organization Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) represented nine churches, deprived of their status, during the proceedings before the ECtHR.
Despite its numerous modifications, the introduction of the Church Act of 2012 into Hungarian law has been one of the severest cases of disenfranchisement since the regime change. HCLU’s position on the matter is supported by last year's decision of the Constitutional Court, which established that the deprivation of status of legally operating churches by the new legislation is null and void, i.e., their legal status as churches remains unchanged. The government has so far failed to enforce the Constitutional Court’s judgment; what's more, one of the aims of the fourth modification of the Fundamental Law was precisely to prevent the possibility of establishing non-compliance with the Hungarian standards of legal protection. The European Court of Human Rights has now confirmed that the Church Act was itself a violation of the law.
The judgment holds that, as long as the aim of the Church Act – filtering out abuses of state funds – is considered legitimate, depriving complainants from their status constitutes a disproportionate restriction on the freedoms of religion and assembly. The ECtHR maintains that, in forcing the disenfranchised churches to undergo a political – as opposed to legal – procedure of re-approval, with a dubious outcome, the Hungarian state violated its obligation concerning neutrality. The same principle was violated when the disenfranchised churches were treated differently from the established ones, not only with respect to cooperation with the government, but also when it came to the public funding of religious activities. The Court claimed there was no good reason to justify these legislative acts.
The Fundamental Law, in its current form, includes rules contradicting the European Convention on Human Rights, as sections of the Church Act that have now been ruled unlawful were introduced into the Fundamental Law by the previous Parliament. Thus the present Parliament had better implement thorough modifications.
