Summary

Abstract

Social security entitlements have long been regarded as a matter of social law that has little to do with the constitutional guarantee of private property. It was the German Federal Constitutional Court that first extended the protection of this constitutional right to pension entitlements in 1980. The Hungarian Constitutional Court followed this example as second in Europe in 1995. It is most probable, that especially the German example motivated the European Court of Human Rights to regard social security benefits as property, which in turn, resulted in similar developments in Austria and Lithuania. The present treatise seeks to explore the real meaning of such an extension of the constitutional protection of property, as well as its doctrinal background. In order to do so, the example of Germany and Hungary is used, not the least because to date both courts have developed an extensive jurisprudence in the relevant field.