Blogsite of the Institute for Legal Studies
1970. January
2015. June 18. 11:57
The regulation of whole life sentences varies in the Member States, however there seems to be a European consensus on granting some form of a meaningful review for possible conditional release from life imprisonment after the expiry of a long-term period spent in prison. Hungary was among the few Member States of the EU and the Council of Europe to have a sanction regime including whole life sentences without the possibility of review for conditional release, until the European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter: ECtHR, Court or Strasbourg court) ruled on the matter and in Magyar v Hungary (Application no. 73593/10, 20 May 2014) declared the Hungarian life imprisonment regime to be in violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (hereinafter: ECHR or Convention). Last week the Kúria, the supreme court of Hungary had to remedy the human rights violation done to the whole life prisoner winning the Strasbourg case. In the review procedure Mr. Magyar was sentenced to life imprisonment with a possibility of conditional release after 40 years the earliest. In the present blog post the judgment will be analyzed in light of the ECHR and the attached case-law.
2015. June 18. 11:42
The regulation of whole life sentences varies in the Member States, however there seems to be a European consensus on granting some form of a meaningful review for possible conditional release from life imprisonment after the expiry of a long-term period spent in prison. Hungary was among the few Member States of the EU and the Council of Europe to have a sanction regime including whole life sentences without the possibility of review for conditional release – until the the European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter: ECtHR, Court or Strasbourg court) ruled on the matter and declared the Hungarian life imprisonment regime to be in violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (hereinafter: ECHR or Convention). As a response to the judgment, the legislative introduced a novel Pardon Committee proceeding that could have been scrutinized by the Hungarian Constitutional Court, but it missed this opportunity. A brief analysis of Hungary’s obligations flowing from the Strasbourg judgment and the new Pardon Committee proceeding will be offered in this blog post.
2015. June 15. 9:20
A certain level of engagement with the EAEU seems unavoidable, but the parallel development of good and differentiated bilateral relations with individual EAEU member countries remains important. Together with the full implementation of the Association Agreements with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, this is a key priority for the EU in the years to come.
