The Constitution of Hungary and the Seven Lost Years

New constitution: What is left as it is is worse than what is changed

“The functioning of the Hungarian State shall be based on the principle of division of powers” - says the new Hungarian constitution (the “Fundamental Law”) in its Article C thereby codifying what is usually regarded as the heart of a democratic political regime. Although the old constitution (which remains in force until the end of 2011) did not contain such an explicit declaration, the doctrine of division of powers has been acknowledged by the Hungarian Constitutional Court as a basic – albeit implicit – principle of the Hungarian constitutional system ever since the early 1990s. Considering that the new Fundamental Law changes little on the institutional structure of the Hungarian governmental system, one has to conclude that the Hungarian system of public law will be characterized by the principle of division of powers just as much from next year on as it was under the old constitution.

But does this characterisation in fact apply?

The Revolt of the Elite Schools

The Hungarian education system reinforces social inequalities

I do not like elite schools. I have never attended any, and now that my daughter is starting school, I have sticked to the principle of not sending her to one. (As a divorced father I had to contend with other principles though.)

"Braceface" series. Episode: "The Beat Goes On".
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/Jade Animation (Shenzen) Company

The obvious problem with elite schools is that they can only exist if there are also not-so-good, second-tier, third-tier schools. That there are no-name brands and second rate companies on the market is a matter of course in a capitalist economy. That there are top, second-tier and third-tier universities is also a widely accepted fact in higher education. But that there should be better and worse secondary schools, or even – which is a very sad aspect of Hungarian reality – better and worse primary schools, is by far not self-evident. I am in fact shocked when I hear my friends treat this phenomenon as if it was natural: Many of them have been climbing the ladder of elite education, their families and later themselves consciously choosing always the “best” available school for further studies. They will almost naturally do the same as parents, because “they want the best for their children”. The scarcity of good jobs and the value of up-to-date knowledge on today's labour market make this endeavour reasonable up to a certain point. What I cannot but wonder, however, is the apparent lack of understanding the harmful consequences this attitude has on Hungary's social cohesion.

Hungarian Vigour in the Common Law

I have always been convinced that my fellow-countrymen can make it to the top in whatever field they want. But I must admit that the common law tradition was among the last areas to be conquered by Hungarians I would have thought of.

Hungarian lawyers have a strong aversion to the case law approach. Law students usually have serious difficulties with learning the subjects in which it plays some role, namely international and European law. These difficulties are caused by the fact that mastering a complete system of rules, which is the ultimate goal of Hungarian legal education, is not enough here. Law faculties in Hungary concentrate on pouring the full content of as many statutes and regulations into the students’ head as they can. These statutes and regulations are usually based on an elaborate conceptual structure, which makes them easy to visualize: It is like a refined architecture built out of basic notions, distinctions, general rules and exceptions. University text books see their task in drawing the distinctions even more precisely, making the system look even clearer and repairing its possible ruptures. Of course written laws and text books intend to have something in common with the reality they pertain to, but even if they succeed, law students are not aware of how reality is reflected by this legal dogmatics. As a result, they finish university with a neat picture in their head of Hungary’s legal system but without basic skills of applying this knoknowledge to real cases.

Where Is the Middle of Hungary?

A recent excursion to the centre of historical Hungary in Szarvas aroused my curiosity and I decided to find out when and by what calculation this place was declared to be the centre of the Hungarian Kingdom. It was only after lengthy searching and with a combined utilization of Google and the New Révai Encyclopaedia (Révai Új Lexikona) that I found the following quotation from the 1879/8 issue of Vasárnapi Újság (Sunday News), a popular weekly journal of the time:

"Hungary's centre. In his work about The Natural Conditions of the Hungarian Empire ("Magyarország természeti viszonyainak leirása", Pest, 1863-65) János Hunfalvy writes: 'Hungary’s middle meridian is 38 degrees 13 minutes Eastern longitude, while its middle parallel of latitude is 46 degrees 53 minutes Northern latitude; these circles of longitude and latitude cross each other not near to Kecskemét but to Szarvas. It means that Szarvas should be approximately in the middle of the country.' In the Szarvas News ("Szarvasi Ujság"), the article continues, József Mihályfi is now giving an answer to the not uninteresting question as to where these lines exactly cross each other, where the centre of the country actually is. If these lines are drawn on the most accurate and detailed plan, which currently exists, on the sheet of Vienna’s Generalstab showing the area around Szarvas, it will become visible that that point corresponds to Kreszan’s mill, one of the two windmills built just north of the town on the area called 'green field’. So Kreszan’s windmill marks Hungary's centre."

The method was obviously rather primitive: The alleged centroid was simply determined by taking the mean value of the coordinates of latitude of the northernmost and southernmost and the coordinates of longitude of the easternmost and westernmost points of the country. The text also answers to the question of why the place is still marked by a windmill.

Now, let us have a look at why Pusztavacs is regarded as the geometric centre of today's smaller country: "The landmark of Pusztavacs was built in the middle of Hungary, more specifically, at the geometric centre of the country. That is why it is worth visiting it and not for the view for example. The point marking the geometric center of our country of 93 000 km2 is situated in the north-eastern outskirts of the village. The landmark is located exactly in the intersection of the diagonals of a rectangle enclosed by” the coordinate lines of the outermost points of the country.

This is exactly the same dilettante method, only in different words. Its biggest mistake is that it has nothing to do with geometric centre. It could be called "geographic centre" at the best.

An essential feature of geometric centre or centre of gravity is namely that it does not depend on the coordinate system applied, but does depend on the shape of the figure. In fact it is defined as the intersection of the lines that divide the figure into two equal areas. The centre of gravity of a triangle is determined by the intersection of its medians, whereas that of more complex polygons can be calculated by dividing them into triangles, or by applying the following formula of analytic geometry:
s.x = sum ((v [i]. y - v [i +1]. y) * ((v [i]. x * v [i]. x) + v [i]. x * v [i + 1]. x + (v [i +1]. x * v [i +1]. x)) / (6 * T));
s.y = sum ((v [i +1]. x - v [i]. x) * ((v [i]. y * v [i]. y) + v [i]. y * v [i + 1]. y + (v [i +1]. y * v [i +1]. y)) / (6 * T));
where the coordinates of vertices and the area of the polygon are given.

Although in the case of curved lines already integral calculus is needed, the centre of gravity of Hungary (or any other country) can easily be found out even at home. All you have to do is to cut the figure of the country out of cardboard, to hang it up at one point, and, as soon as it has reached the equilibrium position, to draw a vertical line downwards from the point of suspension, then to repeat the same process with another suspension. Since both lines divide the figure into equal parts, the intersection of them will show the centre of gravity. Assuming that the cardboard figure reflects the shape of the country in a fairly accurate way (and of course that the country is considered a plane figure instead of a piece of spherical surface) the true geometric center can be determined by projecting your result onto a map.

My revolutionary discovery is a bit detracted only by the fact that in the case of Germany - where both data are available – the geographical points resulting from the primitive method of bisecting the coordinates on the one hand, and from the more sophisticated calculation of centroid on the other hand, are located only 4.5 kms apart.