4.  The first applicant company, Könyv-Tár Kft, is a limited liability company with its registered office in Budapest. The second applicant company, Suli-Könyv Kft, is a limited liability company with its registered office in Tata. The third applicant company, Tankönyv-Ker Bt, is a limited partnership company with its registered office in Budapest.
5.  The applicant companies are schoolbook distributors.
6.  The Hungarian school system was entirely reorganised by a series of measures adopted in 2011 and 2012. The schools, formerly decentralised, became subject to centralised State management. On 9 December 2011 and 24 July 2012 respectively, Acts nos. CLXVI of 2011 and CXXV of 2012 (collectively referred to as “the New Regulations”) were published in the Official Gazette; they contained, inter alia, provisions amending Act no. XXXVII of 2001 on the Schoolbook Market. The amendments came into force on 1 October 2012 and were effective from the school year starting in September 2013. The essence of the new legislation was already contained in the first amendment, published in December 2011.
7.  The applicant companies submitted that the Hungarian schoolbook distribution market, as a whole, had previously involved three groups of market participants: the publishers, the distributors and the schools. Prior to the New Regulations’ entry into force, it could be considered a semi-regulated market; in respect of the publishers this meant that the legislature had established the requirements for a book to qualify as a schoolbook, and it often applied certain measures in this context, such as maximum prices or State subsidies based on indigence. However, the schoolbook distribution sector in itself was an unregulated market. The schoolbook distributors’ clients were the schools, which, in an often highly competitive market, were able to select the publishers and schoolbook distributors, the former for the products they offered and the latter mainly for their reliability and accessibility and for the discounts promoted.
8.  The task of distributors included not only the provision of logistical services but the processing of orders, the management of customised billing and the handling of returns. Most of the companies dealing with the distribution of schoolbooks leased warehouses and delivery vehicles for a two-to-four-month period when performing their activities, which were predominantly seasonal in nature. Besides their regular staff, ranging from three to fifty-seven employees, they employed an additional ten to thirty seasonal workers, normally students, for the compilation of schoolbook packages. Larger market participants generally had their own vehicles and storage bases where they performed both retail and wholesale activities. These companies bought the books from the publishers and made them available to the smaller distributors. There were well over thirty market-dominant schoolbook distributors operating in the country (six large and about thirty medium-sized distributors).
9.  Participants in the market strove to acquire as many schools as possible as clients, in particular those which were located in the area close to the distributors’ warehouses, in order to be able to optimise delivery costs. They made continuous efforts to keep hold of their clients, the schools, by providing flexible and prompt services. The wholesale price margin was generally about 3% to 5%, and the operating profit about 1% to 5%.
10.  The first applicant, Könyv-Tár Kft, distributed educational materials for elementary and secondary schools. In this activity, it had business relationships with some 200 publishers, sixty of them being schoolbook publishers. In 2012 it supplied 126 schools.
11.  The second applicant, Suli-Könyv Kft, served directly (i) 90% to 95% of schools in Komárom-Esztergom County; (ii) 100% of schools in the western part of Pest County; (iii) 65% to 70%) of schools in the northern part of Pest County; (iv) 95% to 100% of schools in Győr-Moson-Sopron County; (v) 95% to 100% of schools in Vas County; (vi) 85% to 90% of schools in Veszprém County; and (vii) 25% to 30% of schools in Budapest. Moreover, it supplied more than 1,200 schools indirectly via subcontractors dealing exclusively in schoolbook retail, competing with another five large distributors.
12.  The third applicant, Tankönyv-ker Bt, supplied about thirty-five schools in two counties.
13.  The New Regulations introduced a new system of schoolbook distribution in Hungary, laying down that “schoolbook supply” ­– comprising the order and purchase of school textbooks and their delivery to schools, and the collection of the purchase price from schools – was a public-interest responsibility of the State.
14.  According to the reasoning of the relevant bill, the legislature’s intention was to discharge these duties through a single, State-owned non-profit book distribution company, Könyvtárellátó Kiemelten Közhasznú Nonprofit Kft (Non-profit Library Supplier Limited Liability Company; hereinafter “Könyvtárellátó”). A description of the objectives pursued gave the following reasons for the decision:
“to strengthen the schoolbook procurer’s position through the uniform and centralised procurement of schoolbooks ... and ... to make schoolbook distribution more transparent by generating competition in a stronger position, that of the procurer.”
15.  The applicant companies submitted that the New Regulations had centralised and monopolised the schoolbook distribution market with a guaranteed margin of 20% for the State-owned schoolbook distributor, without providing any compensation for former market participants, including themselves. As a consequence, the applicant companies and other schoolbook distributors had effectively been barred from the market (which was either their exclusive or major field of activity), where they had been operating freely prior to the entry into force of the New Regulations.
16.  The applicant companies filed a constitutional complaint with the Constitutional Court, requesting that the New Regulations be repealed. However, in their submissions to the Court, they stated that this was not an effective remedy because even if the Constitutional Court had repealed the New Regulations, they would have needed to reinvest a significant amount of money in order to re-establish their business, and would have been unable to repair the damage they had already sustained.
17.  On 14 April 2014 the Constitutional Court terminated the proceedings without an examination of the merits of the applicant companies’ complaint. The Constitutional Court noted that subsequent legislation, Act no. CCXXXII of 2013 on Schoolbook Supply in the National Public Education System, had been enacted, and had entered into force on 1 January 2014. This legislation repealed Act no. XXXVII of 2001 on the Schoolbook Market entirely, including the impugned New Regulations. The Constitutional Court found that the examination of the provisions’ alleged unconstitutionality had thus become redundant.
As of 1 January 2014, Act no. CCXXXII of 2013 had completely removed any schoolbook distribution based on the free market, and had introduced an entirely State-organised form of schoolbook supply to the Hungarian public education system.
The applicant companies did not file a constitutional complaint against Act no. CCXXXII of 2013.