Recodification of the Hungarian Civil Law

Szerző: Péter Gárdos

letöltés

European Review of Private Law, 5/2007. page 702-722

2.2       Codification in the Socialist Regime

The preparation of the Civil Code started in 1953, in a regime, which was based on the idea of the abolishment of ownership (and, finally, of law itself). The first draft was prepared in less than three years within the framework of a governmental committee set up under the auspices of the Minister for Justice. Following lengthy discussions, a revised draft was presented to the Parliament, and finally 111 years after the first attempt, the Civil Code was enacted in Hungary. The aim of the legislator was to prepare a civil code that would break with the conservatism of the Hungarian civil law tradition, which had preserved the traditional legal relations of a feudal society, and ‘to regulate the new legal relations of a society eliminating exploitation and anar­chy’. The Code intended to create a sophisticated regulation; it was not, however, to provide detailed, casuistic regulation, but merely to provide solutions for the typical cases, without using too many definitions and explanations. This regulatory tech­nique is one of the main reasons why the code has managed to survive for almost 50 years, which also included the transformation from a centrally planned socialist economy to a multi-party democracy with market economy in 1989-1990. It is not surprising that in the past 46 years the Code has been amended more than 150 times.

2.3       Recodification of the Civil Code

Based on the aforementioned circumstances, the Hungarian Government decided in 1998 that a new civil code shall be prepared. ‘The direct aim of the revision is the preparation of a modern civil code, which measures up to international practice and expectations, and which will be, as the constitution of economy, the basic law in the field of private law. In addition, the indirect aim is to increase the level of legal certainty, and to make the relations between the code and other acts and decrees,
rules and exceptions, concise and clear, and thus to help orientation in private law relationships. The new Civil Code shall, thus be, by synthesising legislation in the field of private law after 1990, the legislative conclusion and summarisation of the process of the change of regime’.

The Government Decision also established the regime for codification. Working groups were formed, consisting of lawyers, judges, governmental institu­tions, representatives of non-governmental organisations. Their role was to prepare drafts for certain areas of private law (e.g. there were working groups set up in the field of insurance law, the law of securities, the law of financial contracts etc.). Parallel to their work there were studies prepared for the codification (e.g. on the basic principles of private law, on damages, on fiduciary securities etc.). The Editorial Committee, the number of which amount to ten, forms the second level of the hier­archy, consisting of professors, judges and the representatives of the Ministry of Justice and Law Enforcement. It is their role to coordinate the working groups and the preparation of the materials based on the recommendations of the working groups. The Codification Committee, as the major organ of the organisation, counts ministers, and the presidents of the Supreme Court, of the Hungarian Bar Associa­tion, and of the Association of Hungarian Lawyers among its members. Its secretary is András Kisfaludi (former head of department at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest) and Ágnes Sáriné Simkó (head of the Department for the Codification of Civil Law at the Ministry of Justice and Law Enforcement), whilst the head of the Codification Committee is Prof. Lajos Vékás. Although the Department for the Codification of Civil Law in the Ministry of Justice and Law Enforcement has formally only technical tasks, in reality it also plays an important role in the preparation works: besides supervising and co-coordinating the drafting procedure, certain parts of the draft were prepared by the Department.

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