Rule of law

Many CSOs expressed serious concerns about the creation of a new parallel public administrative Court system and a new national judicial office. These changes are part of a step-by-step reform of the judiciary which has been taking place since 2011-2012. The consultation period relating to these changes lasted only three days. As CSOs emphasised in many other cases, the consultation process for proposals relating to legal acts is very short and does not allow for any meaningful input, nor does it take into account the submitted comments.

According to some CSOs, the current judiciary retains a high level of independence, but the ongoing reform of the Court system is a cause for concern as no accompanying needs assessment has been carried out. The EU Justice Scoreboard showed in 2018 that Hungarian Courts were the second most efficient court system in the EU. Therefore, it is unclear to CSOs why the current system needs to be reformed.

The competence of new administrative Courts include economic and social rights, including politically sensitive cases such as asylum. Concern was expressed about the independence of individual judges and the jurisdiction of the administrative Courts. Participants described a politicised process whereby new administrative Courts judges could be elected without the support of peers. In general, participants complained that this new structure lacked clear checks and balances.

Another key issue was the lack of cooperation between the National Judicial Council of Hungary (Országos Bírósági Tanacs, OBT) and the National Office for the Judiciary (Országos Bírói Hivatal, OBH) appointed by the government. The President of the OBH has widespread powers over the whole judiciary, in the areas of budget and appointment of judges and Court Presidents. By comparison, the OBT does not have the necessary financial means and human resources to counterbalance the changes introduced by the OBH – and is the target of stigmatisation in some media, which have represented the OBT as “Soros agents”.

Although the Courts have shown their independence in the past with the State often losing in cases brought by CSOs, cases related to corruption were rarely prosecuted.

Participants indicated that there was a need to control the use of EU funds better to ensure that such funding did not end up abetting corruption rather than helping to strengthen the rule of law.