Alferova Elena Vasilyevna – PhD in Law, Leading Researcher, Head of the Department of Jurisprudence, INION RAN. Skurko Elena Vacheslavovna – PhD in Law, Senior Researcher, INION RAN
The article examines recent constitutional changes in Hungary and Poland, their nature and causes, as well as the interpretation of those changes within the framework of the constitutional development of the post-socialist countries of the European Union. Since the mid-2010s, some of these countries have begun to pursue public legal policies that are dissonant with the rule of law principles, supported by the EU. The current model of government in Hungary and Poland is defined as «illiberal constitutionalism», which is inherently different from the «democratic constitutionalism» typical for other EU member states. Those «illiberal» forms of government in both countries are neither completely constitutionally democratic nor completely authoritarian, but rather represent forms of hybrid regimes. Poland and Hungary are distinguished by their desire to pursue independent national policies, despite the strengthening of centripetal tendencies in the European Union. The reasons for the emergence, legal forms and main directions of the so-called «illiberal» policy of these states, as well as their constitutional and legal transformation within the European Union and the movement towards «new constitutionalism» (according to V. Orban) reflect the evolution of the constitutional order that has developed in those countries, the implementation which depends to a large extent on changes in political power and its leaders. The authors focus on the specifities of the constitutional and legal development of Hungary and Poland at the end of the 20th – beginning of the 21st centuries. The common features and differences of Hungarian and Polish constitutionalism are highlighted, and the influence of centripetal trends in the European Union on its development is traced.
European Union, Hungary, Poland, constitutional development, crisis of the rule of law, constitutionalism, illiberal constitutionalism, new constitutionalism
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