The Hungarian Parliament has significantly restricted the fundamental right to freedom of assembly in Hungary. In connection with the disproportionate and unnecessary restriction of fundamental rights, a number of important aspects can be highlighted, and great attention has also been paid to the fact that in the event of a possible violation of the prohibition of assembly, the participants will also commit a misdemeanor, for which they can be fined (a fine of up to EUR 500 can be imposed).
In the process of detecting violations and applying legal consequences, facial image analysis (facial recognition) is used to identify, even from a distance, citizens who appear at an unauthorized assembly. In this post, I focus on the use of facial recognition systems, because this is also a very important tool of restriction of the fundamental right of assembly, which is a serious restriction of the freedom of citizens, if only by the mere possibility of using the tool can discourage many people from exercising their democratic rights (presumably this was the purpose of the legislation).
Update [24.06.2025]: A number of European NGOs have turned to the European Commission asking for immediate action on the use of facial recognition in the context of the right of assembly in Hungary, citing the prohibition of the use of "real-time" remote biometric identification systems for law enforcement purposes in places accessible to the public (see Section 6 below). The main question is how the Commission evaluates the applicability of the prohibition under the AI Act to this case, because - as I write about it in more detail below - the challenged rules have been designed in such a way that the prohibition in the AI Act will most likely not apply.