Scaremongering in the Hungarian Criminal Law

Abstract

Pandemic had an impact on Hungarian criminal law and as part of it, the Criminal Code of 2012 was amended on several points. The history of criminalizing scaremongering has a one and a half century long past in Hungarian criminal law since the first national code had been adopted in 1878. Along these long decades, historical circumstances and legislative trends affected the wording and legal concept of scaremongering. At the beginning penalizing the dissemination of various untrue news was not regulated in the criminal code, but so-called scaremongering(s) as criminal offences were regulated in several documents and it took decades to form a single criminal law definition for it. The recent criminal legislation including the current and previous criminal codes in force significant changes affected the wording and legal concept of scaremongering. Harsher punishment of perpetrators during hard times or during special legal order was not unprecedented. There has been always a general and increased social unrest during special legal order of course and justification for a more severe punishment with or without being reasonable has already appeared before. The present paper is focusing on the former and current regulation of scaremongering in the Hungarian criminal law.