The Significance of Existing EU Sex Equality Law for Women in the New Member States. The Case of Hungary
| DOI | 10.1177/1023263X0501200406 |
| Published date | 01 December 2005 |
| Date | 01 December 2005 |
| Author | Csilla Kollonay Lehoczky |
| Subject Matter | Article |
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF EXISTING EU SEX
EQUALITY LAW FOR WOMEN IN THE NEW
MEMBER STATES. THE CASE OF HUNGARY
CSILLA KOLLONAY LEHOCZKY*
ABSTRACT
What does EU sex equality law mean for the new ‘post-socialist’ Member States of the EU?
Against the context of the legacy of ‘socialist emancipation’, and the backlash which followed
the 1989/90 revolutions, this article analyses the contributions made by EU sex equality law
to the legal position of women in the new Member States, and the potential for EU sex
equality law to improve the position of women in those Member States. Using the case study
of Hungary, it analyses the measures taken by one such Member State to comply with the
acquis communautaire on sex equality. The conclusions are that EU sex equality law brings
much of value to women in the new Member States, but that the future challenge is to
instrumentalize and embed the EU sex equality acquis so that its promise becomes a practical
reality for those women.
§1. INTRODUCTION
This article considers a question that has engaged many experts throughout Europe, both
in the old and the new Member States, well before and after the 2004 accession. What
would Europe do for women? It has become more and more evident that – beyond
legislative adjustments and technical steps, cooperation and training programmes – the
answer is primarily determined by the recipient medium rather than the received
substance. In other words, the effect of EU law has been conditional not only on the
content of EU sex equality law itself, but also, and even more so, on the Central and East
European legal and social environment.
12 MJ 4 (2005) 467
* Department of Legal Studies, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary; Eo
¨tvo
¨s Lora
´nd
University, Faculty of Law, Budapest, Hungary.
468 12 MJ 4 (2005)
Talking about ‘New Member States’
1
involves a necessary distinction between the two
groups of countries that became Members of the European Union on 1 May 2004. One
small accession group consists of Cyprus and Malta, and the second, larger, group is
made up of the post-socialist
2
countries, albeit with a number of country-specific
symptoms and attributes of the political and economic transition. The latter group shall
be distinguished from the first – Malta-Cyprus – group for the purpose of this analysis.
The experiences held in common, deriving from political and social legacies, create a
distinct entity of the post-socialist countries, in spite of their internal diversity and in
spite of the similarities with the Malta-Cyprus group regarding their patriarchal
traditions. Therefore, for the purposes of this article, ‘New Members’, means only the
post-socialist new Member States of the European Union (PSNMs).
This article will first outline the features that appear as common for the post-socialist
countries, in part as the legacy of the past regime, and in part as a result of the
‘repercussion’ effect of the revolutionary changes of 1989-1990, which heralded a
‘backlash’ against all that represented the socialist past. This first part is intended to reveal
the motives of the societal counter-effect of the political changes working against sex
equality. The second part will present the pattern of the effect and the ways and places in
which – on the basis of the specific situation – EU sex equality law has had a significant
impact on the development of the national situations. Similarly to the ‘repercussion’
effect of past practices, the ‘medication’ effect of the harmonization process, according to
which EU law remedies past ‘ills’, seems to fit into a more general paradigm
characterizing social progress in the PSNM countries. In addition to the assistance of
‘European values’ in promoting sex equality, the main elements of the results of the
harmonization process will be enumerated, their mention either justified by the novelty
or by the particular difficulty of their introduction into post-socialist law. A summary of
the effect of EU sex equality law will be outlined, together with some assessment of
expected further tendencies. The analysis will focus on the Hungarian case as one
example, and also as a representative of the countries of the region, with references either
to the similar situation or to the occasional differences of the other PSNM countries. The
article concludes with some brief observations on the theoretical and policy implicati ons
of its findings.
Csilla Kollonay Lehoczky
1
The correctness of the distinctive language of ‘New’ and ‘Old’ Member States might be questionable
when discussing policy or other issues on current measures. However, the differences and therefore the
distinction are highly relevant in the analysis of and reaction to social phenomena that are rooted in the
socialist past.
2
‘Post-socialist’ denotes countries with a pre-1989 regime based on a centrally planned socialized
economy and a communist-party controlled monolithic political power.
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