On 16 March 2021, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that the Polish tax on the retail sector and the Hungarian tax on advertisements do not infringe EU law on State aid. Both judgments dismiss the Commission’s appeals against the rulings of the General Court. Read more... (Krisztina Széles)

On 4 March 2021, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that the tax regime that four Spanish football clubs have benefited from is considered illegal State Aid. Read more... (Krisztina Széles)

Nowadays, criminal law inspired by the European Union has evolved into a significantly developing discipline and the legislations of the Member States must comply with European requirements. The importance that all legal professionals have proper knowledge in this special area of interaction between criminal law and EU law cannot be stressed enough in the ambit of the current situation, especially in light of the fact that the EU is proceeding towards the realisation of the single area of justice. In the following, we aim to summarise the milestones in the development of European criminal law in two parts. Read more... (Petra Ágnes Kanyuk)

Discussions on the possibility to attribute liability to legal persons for committing offences are far from new. The Romans already had a clear position on this and were opposed to the idea that a persona could be anything else than a natural person. Thus, Ulpian specifies that a municipium cannot be responsible for dolus since it is a legal person, i.e. a fictive entity (Catargiu, 2013, 26.). Even though this default position evolved and despite the consequent lenience towards accepting forms of liability (including criminal liability) of legal persons, the classical idea that legal persons could not be criminally punished prevailed for a long time – and resulted in the adage ’societas delinquere non potest’. Read more... (Petra Ágnes Kanyuk)

Are the Hungarian tertiary education institutions autonomous, independent entities or are they controlled entirely by the state? This hypothetical question has been asked continuously ever since the democratic transition of Hungary because each government tried to change something about the legal status of Hungarian tertiary education. This year, the government decided on the transformation of the mode of operation of seven Hungarian higher education institutions, which many see as a further reduction in autonomy. In my publication, I deal with this issue and after it is presented briefly, I will bring pro and contra arguments both for and against the transformation of the legal status of concerned Hungarian universities. Read more... (Péter Soltész)

In its judgment in Case C-66/18 Commission v Hungary, delivered on 6 October 2020, the European Court of Justice condemned Hungary for failing to fulfil its obligations under EU law by adopting Law XXV of 2017 amending the Law on national higher education (commonly referred to as “lex CEU”). Read more... (Daniel Szilágyi)