From 28 to 30 October, the Department for the Execution of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights carried out a mission to Budapest and held a series of meetings with the Hungarian authorities, focusing on the execution of the Court’s judgments concerning four subject matters:
- prison overcrowding (István Gábor Kovács/Varga group of cases) ;
- police ill-treatment and ineffective investigations (Gubacsi group of cases) ;
- overrepresentation of Roma children in schools for mentally disabled children due to their misdiagnosis (Horváth and Kiss) ;
- international child abduction (Tonello).
Representatives of the following authorities took part in the discussions: the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Human Resources, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Prison Administration, the National Police Headquarters, the Independent Police Complaint Board, the National Judicial Office, the Prime Minister’s Commissioner of the Coordination of the Preparation and Implementation of the Diagnosis-based Catch-up Strategy for Roma, the Central Statistical Office and the Equal Treatment Authority.
Other issues of mutual interest were discussed with the Government Agent’s Office and Mr János Bóka, State Secretary for Cooperation in European and International Justice Affairs of the Ministry of Justice, namely:
- the execution of the Gazsó group of cases concerning the excessive length of judicial proceedings and the lack of effective remedies ;
- the enhancement of the national dissemination of the Court’s judgments and the Committee of Ministers’ decisions concerning execution.
Lastly, meetings were also held with representatives of the Office of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights (Ombudsman), as well as of the civil society (including the Hungarian Helsinki Committee and the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union).