Meeting at the Crossroads: A Comparative Study of the Hungarian and Finnish Legal Remedy System in Administrative Law

Abstract

We can find mechanisms in every legal system for addressing the eventual breaches of law caused by the activities of public administration. The classical aspect of this issue is the creation of different legal remedy procedures against administrative decisions. Legal remedies can be divided into two main types: internal remedies and the judicial review of administrative acts. Although the core purpose of these procedures is the same, they are not identical neither in their functions nor in their outcomes. Finding the right balance between them can be a difficult task and result in different answers. To demonstrate this and outline some basic questions of the construction of a remedy system, the paper chose two prime examples of this divergence, Hungary and Finland. The regulations on the remedy systems of these two countries put different emphasis on the role of internal remedies and of judicial review, as well as on the ex officio investigation powers of judges which is strongly connected to this equilibrium. The two legislatures have followed different paths: in Hungary the internal remedies, which used to be available more widely have been gradually reduced, meanwhile in Finland internal remedies, which were initially exceptional, are becoming more and more widespread. Comparative legal and dogmatic methods were used in the research, which led to the appropriate contextualisation of the legal instruments and allowed for conclusions regarding not only the two administrative remedy systems, but the basic elements of remedy systems in general as well as their interdependencies.