This article discusses the thin socio-legal conceptualisation of the rule of law in Hungary. Employing a culturalist perspective, it first shows how the rule of law had a thin foundation prior to the Second World War in this country. Then, the contribution demonstrates how, contrary to previous understandings, even in the most advanced stages of rule of law building in Hungary, in the early 1990s, the resulting concept had been thin mainly focusing on institutional guarantees and legal certainty. The remaining part of the contribution then critically discusses whether and to what extent it is possible to use backsliding to frame the ongoing legal changes in Hungary.

Precedents in European Union member states for the negative referenda in France and The Netherlands on the Constitution for Europe. Evolution of the investiture of the Commission: parallel with France under Third and Fourth Republic. Double headed executive (President of the European Council and President of the Commission) and ‘double hats’ (Union Minister for Foreign Affairs) in line of the European constitutional tradition. The unborn ‘Legislative Council’ and its Austrian and German counterparts. The aborted ‘Congress of the Peoples of Europe’: forum for ‘State of the Union’ speech, not a electoral body. Protection of minority rights in the Constitution for Europe due to insistence of the Hungarian government; foreign to the dominant Western constitutional concepts. Representative democracy and the formal concept of law: European Laws and Framework Laws as ‘Acts of Parliament’. Strict limits on the possibility to delegate legislation: German, Italian, French roots. European Laws and Regulations: unachieved hierarchy and French precedent. Judiciary as a relative minor branch of government as in the British and French traditions. No German Verfassungsbeschwerde or Spanish recurso de amparo, but probably more annulment procedures and preliminary questions on legality and constitutionality than before. Parallels with German federal concepts: Union Law über Alles; no rigid Kompetenzkatolog and joint competences; distribution of competences not limited to law-making. More than lip service to decentralisation. Constitutional ping-pong and intertwined constitutionalism: territories d'outre- mer and outermost regions.