András L. Pap: Hate crimes, underpolicing, institutional discrimination: Hungarian cases, ECHR reflections
2017/13
In the past year and a half, within 15 months, the European Court of Human Rights adopted three decisions finding Hungary in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights in relation to handling hate crime incidents. We will first provide a brief overview of the three cases, along adjacent Hungarian case law and practices. Following this, cognizant of how the Court focused on both article 3 (degrading treatment) and 8 (private life and ethnic identity), we will turn to the assessment of how law can tackle the phenomenon of institutional discrimination. We will pay special attention to the concept of “harassment” which carries the potential of being used as a silver bullet.