Communication on the 2019 medium-term institutional strategy of the Curia of Hungary
Aim of the strategy
Strategic planning and related concrete action plans are also needed by institutions performing public tasks and having important duties set out in legislation. Statutory duties can and must be interpreted in a coherent manner and the means for the accomplishment of the duties must also be worked out in such manner – whilst due regard is to be paid to the changes in the social environment. Starting from these assumptions, the Curia of Hungary (henceforth: ‘the Curia’) had adopted a medium-term strategy already in 2013 and, following the expiry of that strategy in 2018, elaborated its next medium-term strategy in 2019.
Structure of the strategy
Just as the 2013 strategy, the Introduction of the new strategy describes the Curia’s vision of its own role, as well as the aims to be achieved and the values to be enforced by the Curia. The next five major chapters deal with the following issues, in order of importance: aims related to the performance of the Curia’s core activities; background ensuring the effective performance of the core activities; external relations; enforcing horizontal aspects in the implementation of the strategy; and, finally, change management. In order to ensure easy understanding, the sub-chapters of chapters 2-4 have a similar logical structure. In elaborating a task or problem, the strategy first sets out the relevant institutional aim, then describes the present situation, the problems and challenges that arose, the medium-term aims to be achieved and, finally, the steps of implementing the aims and of checking the implementation of the aims.
Members of the strategy planning working group and the methodology of planning
The strategy has been worked out by judges and judicial employees of the Curia and has been approved by the President of the Curia. In the working group all Curia Departments and Sections and the major non-adjudicative administrative units were represented.
In preparing the strategy, the strategy planning working group relied on the experience gained from the drafting of the 2013 strategy, the relevant documents of other public institutions, and the results of opinion polls carried out among Curia judges.
General institutional aims of the strategy
The general concept is reflected in the adopted aims and values which are the following:
1. The Curia’s task is to protect the rule of law, legal certainty and equal rights.
2. The Curia must ensure the enforcement of the principles of democratic exercise of power as laid down in the Fundamental Law of Hungary (henceforth: ‘the Fundamental Law’), with special regard to the value of judicial independence.
3. The Curia enforces human rights in conformity with the Fundamental Law and the international conventions.
4. The Curia ensures high-standard, unified, consistent and predictable adjudication, and endeavours to promote justice.
5. The Curia shapes its operational and organisational structure by having regard to the requirements of transparency and efficiency, and to the values and ethical principles adopted by the judiciary.
6. The Curia is committed to maintaining an organisational culture which resists corruption, and to strengthening institutional integrity.
7. The Curia devotes special attention to dialogue with the lower courts, other judicial institutions, and the bodies administering the courts.
8. The Curia is open to, and ready for, dialogue with professional partners and deems it important to maintain communication with other segments of the general public, too.
9. The Curia fully complies with the tasks that flow from Hungary’s EU membership and actively participates in international judicial cooperation.
The Curia must enforce and realise its core values and aims by constantly adjusting itself to the changes in the regulatory framework and by relying on the experience gained during its operation. To succeed in this work, three conditions must be met: high professional standard, effective work by the judiciary, and public confidence in the judiciary. In order to satisfy the public law requirements and the public’s demands vis-à-vis the judiciary, judicial forums must perform well in all the three aspects simultaneously.
The Curia is the highest judicial forum in the single Hungarian court system, therefore it is responsible also for the work of the lower courts. This model explains the practice that on certain issues of interpretation the Curia works out solutions in cooperation with lower court judges.
Strategic aims in the light of the Curia’s core activities
In the field of the Curia’s core activities a priority aim is to further develop uniform jurisprudence. It requires a systematic screening of the former guidelines on principles and the identification of the ones that no longer provide guidance under the legislation in force, and the regular publishing of thematic collections of leading cases. The information-chain through which lower court judgments laying down principles reach the Curia must be maintained. The need to review the system of jurisprudence-analysing is also related to this task: experience shows that jurisprudence-analysing performs its function most effectively if the analysis involves an in-depth examination of the jurisprudence of a specific area of law or a specific legal institution and not of a question of interpretation related to principles but having arisen on an ad hoc basis. Lower court judges must be encouraged to raise issues of interpretation before the consultative bodies operating at the Curia.
Moreover, it is expedient to set up, with the involvement of all court departments and sections, a national database containing copies of background materials elaborated by the departments, records of discussions and debates conducted at department meetings, and minutes of positions adopted at such meetings.
With the introduction of ‘genuine constitutional complaint’ the fundamental rights related dimension of judicial adjudication has become more and more pregnant. In this field a strategic aim is to bring about and develop constitutional dialogue with the Constitutional Court in order to ensure that court decisions are annulled as rarely as possible. The settling by law of the question of parallel proceedings conducted before the Constitutional Court and the Curia is also of great importance.
Successful work performance is also an aim in the application of supranational (EU) law. In this field a measure of success is the number of preliminary ruling references admitted by the Court of Justice of the European Union. Another aim is to reconcile the new procedural rules governing the legal institutions of permission and admission with the requirements of EU law.
The dissemination among judges of the results achieved in the area of norm control of local government legislation is also imperative, given that under the Code of Administrative Court Procedure administrative courts operate as norm controlling courts in respect of local government normative decisions.
In addition to ensuring high-standard and uniform jurisprudence, in terms of efficiency the maintenance of the present level can be set as an aim. However, it seems to be expedient to work out an action plan for situations involving sudden arrivals of large numbers of cases.
Strategic issues related to the background ensuring the effective performance of the core activities
As to the tasks related to the Curia’s organisation and personnel, the introduction of measures to reduce judges’ workload remains a priority. As to the Curia’s organisation, the formation of optimally composed judicial panels by having due regard to the characteristics of the specific fields of law, and the further development of the system of senior legal advisors assisting the panels continue to be of great importance. In setting up so-called case preparation teams to support the work of the judicial panels, full utilisation of the professional expertise of the Curia’s judicial employees can be a further step.
An aim closely related to institutional operation is the creation of a predictable application system of filling judicial vacancies.
Workflow rationalisation also includes the constant development of the technical/IT background and the digital services which support judges’ adjudicative and jurisprudence-uniforming activities.
An aim above and beyond the Curia’s adjudicative activities is the realisation of developments guaranteeing IT security and safeguarding IT operations. In the Curia’s future new building the applicability of energy efficient and environment-friendly solutions, including the replacement of paper correspondence with e-correspondence and paper case management with electronic case management, will be considered already in the phase of planning.
The Curia’s external relations
The results of the Curia’s highly professional and effective work must be presented in a manner enabling the general public, legal professionals, the legislature and international forums to perceive and make use of the results.
To this end, streamlined internal horizontal communication is very important, because it enables the Curia to communicate in a unified manner and to send professionally correct and easily understandable messages to the outer world. The communications trainings offered to judges also serve this purpose. To properly administer the Curia’s website, to regularly monitor and develop it by uploading oral, live and picture contents is also a must in the 21st century.
The Curia’s increased active participation in the activities of the international judicial networks, in particular by making use of the possibilities offered by European and regional cooperation (via, for example, mutual learning, knowledge sharing and exchange of experience), is also a recent challenge.
Naturally, to ensure a balanced relationship with the judicial bodies administering the courts and to maintain dialogue with the Constitutional Court is also of fundamental importance.
It is to be achieved that the Curia be vested with the right of making observations, directly and separately, on bills and laws affecting the judiciary, thus institutionalising the Curia’s participation in the legislative work, especially in respect of laws related to the administration of justice by the judiciary and the administration of the courts.
The Curia should, in the future, too, strive to offer optional courses at the law faculties of the universities and regular traineeship possibilities, and to set up a scientific council within its organisation.
Horizontal aspects and change management
The implementation of the strategy cannot be successful if certain aspects are not taken into due consideration. The Curia’s former strategy contained the aims of strengthening legal certainty, as a constitutional requirement, and ensuring sustainable development. In addition to these aims, the present strategy specifies compliance with data protection requirements, and contains a chapter on change management.
In view of the recent and prospective legislative changes affecting the Curia, to achieve the strategic aims it is essential that the Curia can proactively react to the challenges of the regulatory and operational framework and can modify the aims in the light of the changes in the environment. Moreover, the Curia must ensure, by properly ranking its priorities, that the achievement of the aims is commenced immediately after the adoption of the present strategy.
The achievement of the aims requires that the Curia has, within its organisation, an administrative and professional knowledgebase capable of immediately reacting to external changes and cooperating effectively, hence capable, on the one hand, of preparing in advance for possible and prospective changes and responding proactively to changes instead of attempting to maintain undisturbed functioning and to further the strategic aims retroactively, when changes have already occurred and, on the other hand, capable of continuously fostering the achievement of the strategic aims and making corrections whenever corrections are needed.
This task will be performed by the administrative professional team which has been set up at the Curia from staff members representing the various strategic fields.