This short paper describes some basic characteristics of the Hungarian legislation in 1998-2012 through publicly accessible online administrative data. Our focus is to compare the 2010-2012 period to former years. We assume that these characteristics – the number of days elapsed between submitting a bill and the publication of the final law; the type of the person/organisation who submitted the bill; number of modifications that become necessary a short time after the publication of the law – can indicate the quality of the law-making process and the fragile balance between two basic requirements for legislation: reacting to social and economic changes and providing a predictable environment for citizens, firms and organisations.
Our preliminary results indicate that the accelerating law making process in Hungary since 2010 has had some negative effects on the stability of the legal environment, the adequate preparation of laws and the role of societal consultation; hence, the overall quality of legislation.