Nicola Lupo What Hungarian constitutional experience can teach European Constitutionalism INTRODUCTION Te basic assumption from which this contribution stems is that what happened in Hungary in the last 25 years has much to teach everyone studying or using con- stitutional law in general, and especially for those who approach the subject with reference to a Member State of the European Union. In some ways, the evolution of the Hungarian Constitution can be considered as a metaphor of the difculties with which European constitutionalism has been struggling in recent years (Vec- chio 187). Clearly, the current picture of the Hungarian constitutional system, as depicted in the frst pages of the contribution of Pál Sonnevend, is far from being satisfactory. It is difcult to deny that “a permanent constitution-making process, a deteriora- tion of the guarantees of fundamental rights and a lack of efective checks and ba- lances” are all elements that show a phase of difculty and crisis of constitutionalism in Hungary. How could it happen that a state which in 1989 seemed to be at the forefront, among the former communist countries, of the transition process towards constitutional democracy has lost so much ground in the last ffeen years? How could the situa- tion of constitutionalism in Hungary deteriorated so much in the years that followed the accession to the European Union in 2004? Tese are the rather dramatic questions that every external observer of the Hungar- ian recent constitutional experience tends inevitably to ask. Of course, it is not easy to give answers to these questions, especially if you are examining Hungarian recent constitutional experience from a certain distance. My very broad hypothesis is that this process is caused partly by some specifc fea- tures of the Hungarian transition to democracy: that is, over-simplifying, to the excessive trust in “legal constitutionalism” and to the underestimation of some elements that usually help to build a constitutional identity. For other parts, this process seems to fnd a fertile ground due to the democratic problems the Euro- pean Union is facing. In fact, they determine negative efects also on the function- ing of democracy inside its Member States, especially those who do not have strong and long-lasting democratic traditions, without ofering many safeguards that