Hungary: a court rules that targets should be ambitious

---

What Hungary did

By 2023, Hungary had already achieved the 40% emissions reduction target for 2030 set in Article 3(1) of its Climate Protection Act. Far from being a success story, this rendered the target functionally obsolete: with it met years early, the law no longer drove any further climate action. In January 2025, members of Friends of the Earth Hungary's youth programme wrote to the Constitutional Court, arguing that the outdated target amounted to a "generational injustice", shifting the burden of meaningful climate action onto those who come next.

Photo by Anja Lee Ming Becker on Unsplash 

How it Delivered

In June 2025, following a constitutional petition originally brought by fifty opposition MPs, the Constitutional Court struck down Article 3(1), finding it unconstitutional for violating the principles of intergenerational justice, precaution and environmental protection. The Court ruled that the 2030 target was inadequate given the severity of climate change, and went further, finding that Parliament had failed in its duty to act and ordering it to adopt a comprehensive new climate framework, covering mitigation, adaptation and resilience, by 30 June 2026.

What Made it Work?

The case reframed an apparent achievement as a failure of ambition. The claimants could show, concretely, that a target already met imposes no discipline on today's decisions, and the constitutional principle of intergenerational justice gave the Court solid ground on which to act, not only to annul the weak target but to compel a stronger law in its place.

Future Generations Takeaway

A climate target that asks nothing of the present is a bill sent to the future. Hungary's ruling strengthens the principle that fairness between generations is a legal standard, and shows a court willing to order the state to legislate for it. Keeping the future open means setting goals that still have work left in them.

This case study is based on one kindly shared with us by the us by School of International Futures (SOIF) and can be found in their digital implementation handbook: 'One Year in Practice: Stories of Global Action for Future Generations'.  We have updated and expanded some case studies with more recent developments and additional sources where relevant.