Resumen de Social rights, social policy, and labor law in the hungarian populist-nationalist system

Csilla Kollonay Lehoczky, Balázs Majtényi

• This article examines, through the example of the Hungarian illiberal regime and with the analysis of primarily the Hungarian Constitution (named Fundamental Law, 2011), the Hungarian Labor Code of 2012, how the emergence of a populist-nationalist regime affects social rights, social policy and labor law regulation. It analyzes how the Hungarian illiberal system has restricted social rights and how the new constitution emphasizes obligations over fundamental rights, as well as the anti-poor, anti-Roma, and anti-union policy of the government based on the constitutional concept of the nation, and the transformation of the labor law regulation.

  The article states that the transformation of all of these issues is well illustrating the way how a populist-nationalist system is constructed and works. It underlines the phenomena that although the rise of the current Hungarian system undermines the guarantees that protect them not only under constitutional law but also in the world of labor it could gain support of the workers through its populist-nationalist rhetoric. The reasons of this “success” may hide in part in the historic background of Hungary and in part (probably in major part) in the power of rising contemporary populism and nationalism.