They announced the end of the special legal order five years ago, but it's now been in place for 1,700 days

“The left tried in vain to accuse us, claiming that the special legal order would last forever. We are now ending it sooner than most European countries,” said Gergely Gulyás, Minister of the Prime Minister's Office, and Máté Kocsis, leader of Fidesz's parliamentary group, on June 16, 2020, exactly five years ago, when the state of danger declared due to Covid-19 was lifted. (For the difference between the definition of a state of emergency and a state of danger, as defined in Hungary's Fundamental Law, see our previous article.) As it turned out later, this was only temporary: four months later, it was introduced again, and apart from this 140-day break, Hungary has now been governed under a special legal order, called a state of danger, since March 11, 2020, or for 1,784 days.

Looking back on it now, five years later, this statement has aged particularly badly, as the Fidesz-KDNP coalition, which had a two-thirds majority in parliament then as it does now, is now close to completing a full four-year term under a special legal order. In March 2020, Gulyás and Kocsis justified the need for decree-based governance in a joint video message, and specifically requested the support of the Hungarian Parliament.

Just as it has done every time since, the Fidesz-KDNP majority granted the government the requested authorization. Even back then, opposition MPs were more cautious , wanting guarantees and time limits to be incorporated into the law, but they were voted down by the ruling parties. In the end, the ruling parties' MPs – whom Viktor Orbán later described as “133 brave people” – made a decision without consensus. He added that “it doesn’t matter what the opposition is afraid of, that’s their business.” Thus, for more than five years now, with the exception of a four-month period, Hungary has not been functioning under a normal legal system.

The state of danger declared due to Covid-19 was not unique to Hungary. Many other countries took similar steps at the time, which was necessary to ensure an effective and rapid response to the situation and to allow for the introduction of extraordinary measures such as movement restrictions. In Hungary, these were first lifted on June 18, 2020, and the government proudly announced that – despite the opposition's concerns – it was among the first in the world to relinquish its extra powers. However, celebrations were premature, as the second, more severe wave of the pandemic arrived that fall, and as the numbers kept climbing, the special legal order was brought back in November 2020 and is still in place today.

After this, the government no longer conformed to the various waves, and the Coronavirus emergency remained in place until the end of June 2022. Meanwhile, in the first half of 2022, as the Covid pandemic gradually abated, and because of increasingly favorable data, from May onwards, infection figures were only published on a weekly basis. By July 2022, it was therefore high time to lift the state of danger, especially since another one – this time due to the Russian-Ukrainian war – had been introduced on May 25, the day the fifth Orbán government was formed. To make this possible, Fidesz-KDNP even modified the Fundamental Law. It is this ‘state of danger due to war’ that Hungary has now been living under for more than three years.

“This war represents a constant threat to our security, jeopardizes our physical safety, and endangers the energy supply and financial security of the economy and of our families,” Viktor Orbán said in May 2022, justifying the introduction of the state of danger. The Prime Minister thus requested permission for his government to react quickly, even though it enjoys the support of the Fidesz-KDNP coalition, which has a two-thirds majority in parliament.

Since May 2022, the ruling party's supermajority has repeatedly extended the special legal order every 180 or 210 days, most recently until November 14 2025. In the meantime, at the suggestion of Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén, they've already started turning some of the emergency decrees into laws. This is necessary because if the special legal order were to be lifted, a significant portion of the decrees issued would automatically cease to be valid.

But why is the government so keen on maintaining the special legal order? What does it offer them that they don't already have? According to the Fundamental Law, during a ‘state of danger’, the government has the power to

• suspend the application of certain laws;
• diverge from legal provisions; and
• introduce other emergency measures.

In recent years, the government has certainly made ample use of these provisions, and there have also been cases where the legal system has been abused. In addition to the necessary measures (mandatory mask wearing, lockdowns, etc.), even during the Covid pandemic, a number of emergency decrees were issued that were not related to the successful handling of the pandemic. For example, a law against fearmongering was passed, which actually led to someone being arrested for a five-word Facebook post, but they also used the pandemic as a justification for restricting teachers' right to strike.

And then, in 2022, they ramped up governing under a special legal order, citing the war in Ukraine as justification.

The decrees passed under this justification begin with: “In view of the armed conflict and humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine, and in order to avert the consequences of these in Hungary,” although it is hard to see what many of them have to do with the war going on next door. They cited the Russian-Ukrainian war as a reason for making it easier to fire teachers participating in civil disobedience, and they also referred to the conflict in Ukraine when they decided that the state was not required to pay area fees to Budapest for storing the fireworks equipment in public places when the celebratory fireworks had to be postponed due to bad weather. But the government's decisions made during the Coronavirus-related emergency – which have since been elevated to the level of law – are also being kept secret on these same grounds.

The government also used a decree issued under the state of danger to ensure that there could be no competition among taxi drivers. According to the government, this was necessary because some wanted to introduce the so-called “Vienna model” in Budapest, which would have relaxed the current system of having to use an official price fixed by law, and would have created a real competition. A similar decree was used to introduce the 'reintegration custody', i.e. the release of people smugglers from prison. Or in Szeged, for example, they tried to use the war in Ukraine as a justification for cutting down a forest. This was eventually prevented by the local authorities, and the diocese gave up on its plans.

This is what peace looks like! Is it really?

While Hungary remains the only country in Europe under a state of danger due to war, since the beginning of the year, the Prime Minister has announced several times that peace is within reach. Despite the government's expectations, however, Donald Trump has not managed to resolve the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in 24 hours, or even in five months. A few months ago, Viktor Orbán was still very optimistic: at the end of February, for example, he declared that the reason why the euro briefly went under 400 forints was because the war was over. He even slightly modified some of his previous statements, saying that there was “zero, no chance” that the conflict would spread to Hungary.

More recently, he has been more cautious in his statements about the end of the war. He does, however, continue to maintain that Russia is too weak to attack NATO, which includes Hungary. Despite the announcement from the head of government claiming that peace has come, or his claim that the chances of an attack on Hungary are zero, until now there has been no indication that the government, which calls itself “pro-peace” and refers to others as pro-war, intends to put an end to the state of danger due to war.

This is despite the fact that in recent years, we have seen the Fidesz-KDNP government use its two-thirds majority to ram proposals through the entire legislative process just as efficiently as if they were emergency decrees. Just a few months ago, a law designed to make holding the Budapest Pride parade impossible made its way through the entire parliamentary system in just 29 hours, and spent less than half a day before MPs.

In recent years, Hungary has become a country of crises and emergency situations, with periods when the government kept piling these situations on top of each other. In 2022, when the state of danger due to the Coronavirus emergency ended – which, for a period coincided with the state of danger due to the war in Ukraine –, another one was declared due to the energy crisis. And if all this were not enough, there is also the “crisis caused by mass immigration.” This one has been in place for nine years, since it was first introduced in March 2016, and its duration has been repeatedly extended ever since. The most recent prolongation was in February this year, so it will definitely remain in place until September 7.

The government likely isn't going to deal with the recently extended state of danger due to war until November 14. This raises the question of whether the parliamentary elections scheduled for next April will also be held while a special legal order is in place. We contacted Viktor Orbán and Minister Gergely Gulyás, who heads up the Prime Minister's Office, to ask why they believe it is still necessary to maintain the state of danger due to war and whether it is possible that it will be lifted before next year's elections, but we did not receive a response before publication.