HUNGARIAN REGULATION OF E-GOVERNMENT IN THE LIGHT OF EU LEGISLATION

Abstract

E-government and electronic communication have been part of the Hungarian legal system for more than two decades. This paper describes the process by which these legal institutions have been shaped and developed through domestic legislation, in the context of the European Union’s Information and Communications Technology and eGovernment policies. Since the Bangemann report in 1994, the European Union has given high priority to the development of e-public services and e-government, and this has placed a heavy burden on all Member States to implement the rules. In Hungary, the directed wayfinding started in the early 2000s, which, with some slowdowns, continues to this day. Two decades may not be a long time if we look at individual legal institutions, but in this case, it is a dynamic period full of paradigm shifts that justifiably deserves academic interest. In our study, we have broken down domestic regulation into six distinct periods, in parallel with EU regulation. If the application of domestic rules are taken into account and the results we have achieved in the use of e-services, it can be seen that we are still very far from even the EU average. We already have what appears to be a stable and coherent set of rules on which the environment of the e-services can be built, but we fear that this is still a very long way off.