Respect for Administrative Procedural Time Limits and the Requirement to Complete Cases within a Reasonable Time

Abstract

Article XXIV of the Fundamental Law of Hungary, which guarantees the fundamental right of fair administration, explicitly mentions the requirement to complete cases within a reasonable time. The study seeks to answer the question of the enforcement mechanism of the reasonable time requirement. On the one hand, the study reviews the current and former rules of administrative procedural law on the legal consequences of exceeding time limits. On the other hand, it examines the assessment of the exceeding of procedural time limits on the basis of the practice of the
Constitutional Court and administrative courts. After a review of the case law, the study points to the conclusions that can be drawn from it. In sanction-application (administrative fine) cases, if the authority exceeds the statutory time limit, this does not necessarily mean that the requirement of a reasonable time limit under the Fundamental Law is violated, but compliance with the
statutory time limits and the calculation of time limits does not automatically mean that the requirement of “reasonableness” in the Fundamental Law is not violated either.