Under the provisions of Act I of 2017 on the Code of Administrative Court Procedure, a brand new institution has been introduced in Hungary: as of 1 January 2018, in administrative court proceedings, the judge may, with the agreement of the parties, allow for a court mediation procedure in the cases in which the law does not preclude it. The primary method to approach the topic is the review of the relevant primary legal sources [actual law in the form of the constitution (Fundamental Law of Hungary), acts, governmental decrees, orders of the President of the National Office, court cases, etc.] and secondary legal sources (Hungarian and international scientific literature explaining the primary sources, the legal practice and also the specific circumstances determining the broader social environment) through which we may define relevant scientific problems, create our own definitions and prepare a catalogue of practical problems, specifically for Hungarian issues regarding the topic. Moreover, this article tries to build on the results of the interviews with judges, representatives of different defendants (administrative authorities) and others. Qualitative interviewing, including the interviewing of judges and other participants of such proceedings, is a relatively new method in the field of legal studies, at least in Hungary.

Mediation in the administrative procedure is a new institution that provides a chance for an improved perception of public administration, yet it also gives rise to a range of doubts. The latter spring chiefly, though not solely, from the nature of administrative control. The principles of the rule of law, objective law, and voluntary mediation, which may be taken an improper advantage of, contrary to the legislator’s intentions, are also identified as barriers.
Analysis of the issue implies that administrative proceedings leave room for mediation. Whether it will fulfil expectations, however, largely depends on the attitudes of parties and administrative authorities, or their employees, to be precise, for whom mediation is undoubtedly both a processual and mental challenge.
The introduction of mediation to the Code of Administrative Procedure is to be applauded, mainly from the perspective of inducing citizens’ trust in public authorities. Mediation may also prove an effective instrument of eliminating conflicts in administration and thus contribute to reducing the caseload to be heard by administrative courts.
It is important, though, for this opportunity to be taken proper advantage of and for the transformation of administration from controlling to mediating and more friendly to subjects administered to continue. This is a trend that deserves to be followed not only in Polish but also other legislations.

Pursuant to article 9 clause 2 of Ordinance of the President of the Republic of Poland on Administrative Procedure of 1928, persons which possessed so-called legal interest in the case, were entitled to participate in the administrative procedure as a party. Both in procedure initiated by the authority ex officio and initiated on their own demand. The essential and still unsettled question of this construction is: who is authorised by the law to establish the existence of that legal interest, and consequently who decides on the admission of the applicant to the proceeding. This issue has been transferred to the Tax Code of 1997 with the implementation of that scheme, without taking into consideration the legal specificity of the tax assessment, especially self-assessment, to the tax procedure. Furthemore, pursuant to the ontological system, presented by Roman Ingarden in his work Controversy over the Existence of the World, an object which is the initiation of the procedure is an event, not a thing, processes, purely intentional object or an idea. Tax procedural law does not distinguish and name various types of objects properly, which causes serious problems as to legal interpretation. The aim of this work is to give some basic legal and philosophical directions for the reconstruction of the institution of the tax procedure initiation.

The theme of the article is suitable application of the provisions of the Code of Administrative Procedure in cases where a decision is issued by universities. The article discusses the case law of administrative courts and two ways of interpreting this problem. The article also the position of other authors and our own opinion of the author.

In the judgement C-403/16 Soufiane El Hassani v. Polish Foreign Office European Court of Justice noticed that provisions of internal law cannot limit the right to judical-review established in art. 32 par. 3 of Visa Code. The regulation must be interpreted in context of EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Meanwhile the sentence was answer to question of Polish Supreme Administrative Court and it arose under Administrative Courts Proceedings Act which prohibits performing judicial review over visa decisions. The aim of the paper is to explain that judicial review at those issues may be effectively performed by common courts, without damaging visa-applicants rights. The possibility comes from wide definition of civil case in code of civil procedure and attribution of common courts in some public administration cases.

The aim of the publication is to establish the function of the legal regulation of the principle of resolving legal doubts in favour of the citizen (in dubio pro libertate), introduced by the amendment of 2017 to the Code of Administrative Procedure. The purpose of the article is also to compare the state of the regulation in force at the time of its entry into force with the legal state created after the introduction of the amendment. It has been argued that the introduced principle worsened the legal situation of citizens in relation to their situation before its entry into force. The paper briefly presents the functions of law, including procedural law. This principle has been discussed and it has been established that it has a protective function. First and foremost, to ensure the security and stability of the law when the legislator has failed to fulfil its duty to legislate correctly and fairly. This function is of particular importance in cases where an administrative body unilaterally determines constitutional rights and freedoms. Resolving legal doubts in favour of the citizens is of particular importance in administrative law, which is very dynamic area (inflation and atomisation of this law), specialised (e.g. technical conditions of development) and complex due to the existence of various hierarchies of sources of law (constitution, statutes and secondary legislation, including local laws). The principle also protects other values, such as an important public interest. As a result of the comparison of the state of regulation before 2017, it was established that as long as the principle of in dubio pro libertate was a postulate of the doctrine, court judgments, interpreted from other principles of administrative proceedings, it did not suffer such significant limitations and could serve more fully to protect an entity. It the current state of law, administrative bodies can make use of it in a limited way only to several proceedings. Nor does it apply if there is – as is common in administrative proceedings – an important social interest or conflicting legal or factual interests of the parties concerned. The originality of the work results from taking into account the case law developed since the entry into force of the principle and the comparison and analysis of the situation of citizens before and after its introduction into the Code. The research carried out for the purpose of this work will be based on the comparative legal method as well as legal-dogmatic analysis, including the analysis of Polish normative material and the resulting views of the judicature and doctrine of law.