• By
  • Margit Feher
Hungary’s Constitutional Court

Hungary’s government must provide reasons if it wants to sack a civil servant, Hungary’s Constitutional Court said Tuesday, canceling legislation drafted by the governing Fidesz party.

The Hungarian parliament, where Fidesz holds a two-thirds majority, in December passed a bill that made it possible to dismiss civil servants without the employer providing any reason. The new law was supposed to “create an opportunity to establish a corps of high-quality experts and improve the quality of public-sector work,” the explication of the bill said at the time.

Critics warned that civil servants, for fear of losing their jobs, would be servile to the government, while the governing party would be able to replace those not to its liking with its own people.

The Constitutional Court annulled the legislation Tuesday, saying it infringed several fundamental rights, like the rule of law, entitlement to work, the right to take public office, the right to human dignity, and the right to seek legal remedy, the court said in a statement.

The Constitutional Court didn’t question the need to relax the law in order to improve the efficiency of the public sector, it said. However, the employer—the government in this case—can’t have limitless rights to dismiss civil servants, the court added.