The Justice and Home Affairs Ministers of EU Member States discussed the insolvency and data protection legislation at an informal meeting held on Friday in Dublin.

Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Public Administration and Justice Tibor Navracsics told MTI, the Hungarian News Agency, in an interview that bankruptcy proceedings had in the past resulted in the liquidation of businesses in almost every instance. However, in the wake of the recession, it is now an increasingly widely-shared view in the countries of Europe that insolvent businesses should be given a second chance to stand back up on their feet and reorganise their operations.

There are, at present, no such reorganisation procedures available in Hungary and the institution of personal insolvency is likewise not recognised. The new European legislation in the making that is to replace the regulations currently in force will provide for these.

The EU legislation currently in force must be amended, the Hungarian Ministry of Justice stated in its preliminary press release, because we have to date been unable to achieve the goal set; namely, the goal of preventing the removal of funds and assets through the selection of the place of the insolvency proceedings. The proposed amendment concentrates on preventing businesses from placing creditors with which they entered into a legal relationship in a former Member State at a disadvantage by relocating their organisational units responsible for management and governance, thereby evading the rules of jurisdiction.

The Friday debate, Tibor Navracsics said, focused on detailed rules as to how claims could be collected reassuringly also on a European scale. As regards the other topic of the Dublin meeting, the issue of data protection legislation, the ministers have, for the moment, put aside the otherwise unavoidable question of whether a uniform European regulatory regime is required or a European Directive that provides more scope for national specificities. Instead of deciding on this issue, the attending ministers discussed minor details, the Hungarian Justice Minister said, such as whether a European authority or the national authorities should have competence to impose a fine in the event of the infringement of the data protection rules and what criteria should be considered upon the imposition of the fine.

They also discussed the range of issues that should be removed from under the effect of the data protection legislation. It is obvious, for instance, that if a parent „manages” his or her child’s personal data on an Internet website, this type of data management should not be governed by the stringent data protection rules. It is, however, an issue to be thoroughly considered as to how the legislator should approach the question of „friendly data management” which is an increasingly frequent phenomenon with the spread of social websites.

In response to MTI’s enquiry, Tibor Navracsics said that he did not have a bilateral meeting with his Irish counterpart in conjunction with the Dublin meeting. In the course of a private conversation, he told his Irish colleague in connection with the case of the Irish driver who killed two children and was convicted in Hungary that he was hoping that they would be able to find a reassuring solution in the future. "We did not go into details; we continue to wait for the (European) Commission to convene a meeting on the issue, as was previously planned”, the Hungarian Justice Minister said.

(Ministry of Public Administration and Justice)