The Federation of Jewish Communities in Hungary has called a ruling by the Hungarian Constitutional Court rejecting parliamentary amendments to a law on hate speech "outrageous". The court, which called the amendments “unconstitutional”, said in a statement that they would curtail freedom of expression. "In a free and democratic society the expression of extreme and exclusive opinion does not endanger the foundations and operations of the society because by expressing such views, the discriminator confines itself to the periphery," the judges reasoned.
The Constitutional Court stressed that in order to isolate voices of hate, political figures consistently had to take a stand. The Hungarian parliament passed two amendments concerning hate speech with the support of the group of the governing Socialist Party. According to the first amendment, passed in November 2007, the civil code on hate speech would enable legal action even human rights are being infringed by expressions directed at an ethnic or religious group to which the person belongs. A second amendment would have introduced a maximum prison sentence of two years for anyone using inflammatory language about ethnic groups or offending their dignity. The amendments - which were not endorsed by the government - did not take effect because Hungarian president Laszlo Solyom questioned their constitutionality and had asked the Constitutional Court to review them.
