BERLIN — Despite criticism by the European Union and even the United Nations about the lack of sufficient checks and balances between the executive and legislative powers, Hungary’s Parliament approved a new Constitution on Monday, just halfway through the country’s term in holding the E.U.’s rotating presidency.
One of the most disputed provisions curbs the powers of the constitutional court on budget and tax matters and allows the president to dissolve Parliament if a budget is not approved.
The center-right party Fidesz, which swept into power last year with a two-thirds majority, was the only party that voted for the Constitution in the 262-to-44 vote. The decision by the main opposition Socialists and liberal parties to boycott the vote reflected the controversy not just over the contents of the Constitution, but also the way it was drafted and the political polarization that has continued ever since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990 and its satellites moved toward democracy.
But Janos Lazar, leader of Fidesz’s parliamentary faction, told Parliament before the vote that the Constitution represented something fundamental: a break with Hungary’s communist past.
The Constitution served to repay “those Hungarians who changed the regime and the political players who took part in shaping political life,” he said. “We are trying to settle that debt.”
As soon as he was elected last year, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who was once a leading dissident, said he would move quickly to write and pass a new Constitution that he claimed would complete Hungary’s transition to a full-fledged democracy.
The opposition parties, however, withdrew from a commission that was established last year to draft a written Constitution, the first in Hungary’s turbulent history.
“They withdrew for political reasons,” Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi said in an interview Friday in Berlin. “We wanted them to participate. We kept asking them to come back. It was a big mistake that they did not rejoin the commission.”
The opposition claimed it would not have been listened to even had it remained in the commission.
Mr. Martonyi denied such allegations and mentioned that the Greens party had been involved but had also dropped out. Nevertheless, he said the Greens’ concerns about sustainable development were reflected in the Constitution, he said.
Mr. Martonyi went on a diplomatic offensive last week to explain why the Constitution would complete Hungary’s transition from a communist state to a democratic society.
Even so, the contents of the Constitution, which will go into effect in January, did not satisfy the Venice Commission, the E.U.’s constitutional law advisory body. Last week, it questioned the transparency of the process in addition to the powers Parliament will have to curb the constitutional court’s judges, especially over budgetary and other financial matters.
The constitutional court’s restrictions with regard to financial issues will be lifted only once the public debt sinks below 50 percent of gross domestic product.
Laszlo Solyom, a former president as well as a former head of the constitutional court, criticized the curbs on the court and the way the Constitution was drawn up.
“The drafting process had lost its dignity by descending to the level of common parliamentary wrangling,” he said in excerpts of an article to be published in the Thursday edition of the weekly Heti Valasz. Still, he said, “Hungary will stay among the European democracies even under the new Constitution.”
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