Opportunities and limits of application principles and Civil Code rules in Hungarian labour law Crisis management with means of civil law

Abstract

This Working Paper describes the correlation between the new Labour Code (of 2012) and the new Civil Code (of 2013) in the Hungarian law system. The examination is not autotelic. Since labour law was artificially separated from private law before the regime’s economic and political change on the grounds of political and law policy, the implementation of principles and rules of civil law was out of the question, despite the fact that a cautious opening could be observed in law enforcement. After the change of regime, labour law created a relatively closed system and consequently could not find a solution to a number of problems that were raised by the labour market. Labour law was characterised by random flexibility and marginal security. In the course of the elaboration of the new Labour Code (LC) and the new Civil Code (CC), the indicated problem resurfaced, already as a possible crisis management tool, in order to also create a new type of flexibility and security. However, the endeavour to establish a transparent connection between labour law and private law failed, despite the initial intentions