Mr. Péter DARÁK, President of the Curia of Hungary convoked the Plenary Session of Curia judges on the 11th of May 2015 which was held in the assembly hall of the former Palace of Justice (the building currently houses the Museum of Ethnography) in Kossuth Square. Mr. Péter POLT, Prosecutor General, Ms. Tünde HANDÓ, President of the National Office for the Judiciary, Mr. Attila HÁMORI, President-in-Office of the National Judicial Council, Mr. János BÁNÁTI, President of the Hungarian Bar Association and Mr. Pál SOLT, retired President of the Supreme Court also attended the meeting as invited guests.
The participants and guests of the Plenary Session were greeted by President DARÁK who expressed his gratitude to Mr. Lajos KEMECSI, Director General of the Museum of Ethnography for letting the Curia to hold its Plenary Session in the assembly hall of the former Palace of Justice again after more than fifty years. In his welcome address, President DARÁK recalled the notable events, ceremonies and memorable court trials that the first-floor assembly hall had been home to. He emphasised that the lines of seats in the hall look out to the Parliament which reflects the idea that ensuring the coherence of the legal order is one of the most important tasks of the judiciary.
President DARÁK subsequently reported on the 2014 activities of the Curia. He noted that the Curia had been particularly active last year in the field of jurisprudence-analysis: from among the eight topics of examination, he highlighted the ones that had focused on expropriation, administrative procedural law and the taking of expert evidence. He gave an account of the digitalisation of the most important Curia decisions at www.kuriaidontesek.hu as an electronic version of the Curia’s paper-based Official Journal as of the Spring of 2014. This electronic database keeps the public informed of the above decisions in a modernised manner. Regarding the management of the Curia’s activities, President DARÁK referred to the updating of the Curia’s internal regulations and to the last year’s organisational development project that had been carried out with the financial support of the State Reform Operative Programme in respect of both the adjudicating bodies and the administrative entities of the Curia. President DARÁK presented the most important changes in the court’s personnel in 2014 and added that five positions for judges had been offered and subsequently filled last year. He briefly assessed the Curia’s 2014 caseload: in general, the different departments have to deal with several thousand remedy requests per year, the overwhelming majority of which are petitions for judicial review. In 2014, the Curia had 7 709 new cases brought before it, whereas it closed 7 959 cases. Despite the heavy workload, most of the cases are dealt with within one year and a substantial proportion of them are closed within six months. He praised the professionalism of Curia judges and reported that thirty-four of them had acted as instructors of various training programmes organised by the Hungarian Judicial Academy last year.
In his report, President DARÁK also assessed the 2014 activities of the Curia’s Municipality Panel and noted that its proceedings had, in many cases, led to the revision of the impugned municipal decree or had led the municipality concerned to put an end to an unlawful situation. He referred to the so called “series of lawsuits for judicial norm control” lodged with the above panel, in particular to the ones that had covered the payment of land tax and the duty to collect and transport household wastewater. He considered that an important change had taken effect as of the 1st of January 2014 in the decision-drafting methods of the Municipality Panel, since it decided to follow the guidelines contained in the summary report of a jurisprudence-analysing working group that aimed at modernising and harmonising the process of the drafting of court decisions.
As to the Curia’s 2014 activities related to the unification of the courts’ jurisprudence as enshrined in the Fundamental Law, President DARÁK said that the above unification is guaranteed by the following means: uniformity decisions, departmental opinions, court decisions of principle and court rulings of principle. He reported on the most important uniformity decisions of the year 2014, in particular uniformity decision no. 1/2014 KMJE on the revision of the former Supreme Court/Curia instruments of unification related to the functioning of civil society organisations, uniformity decision no. 1/2014 PJE on the revision of the former Supreme Court/Curia guidelines in the fields of civil and economic law, as well as uniformity decision no. 2/2014 PJE on the unfairness of some of the contractual clauses of foreign exchange loan contracts. From among the departmental opinions, President DARÁK highlighted departmental opinion no. 2/2014 BK on the interpretation of the definition of public service function, departmental opinion no. 4/2014 KMK on the suspension of the execution of administrative decisions and departmental opinion no. 1/2014 PK on certain legal issues relating to the quashing of lower instance judgements.
President DARÁK finally gave an overview of the Curia’s 2014 financial situation and briefly reported on the organisational development projects carried out last year within the framework of the State Reform Operative Programme, including an action plan aiming at reducing the number of cases with a disposition time of more than one year and a communications training intended for front office judicial employees. President DARÁK also informed the participants of the Plenary Session about the commencement of the development of the network of senior advisors, the launch of a new internship programme based on co-operation agreements concluded between the Curia and the doctoral schools of different faculties of law with a view to maximising the chances of finding suitable senior advisors by enabling doctoral students to get involved in the Curia’s work.
Following President DARÁK’s report, Mr. Péter POLT, Prosecutor General and Ms. Tünde HANDÓ, President of the National Office for the Judiciary delivered their speech. With regard to the prosecution services’ contribution to promoting the unification of the courts’ jurisprudence, Prosecutor General POLT recalled that he had initiated six uniformity decision proceedings in criminal cases since 2012 and he had commented on numerous petitions for judicial review submitted by third parties in public interest protection cases. On the basis of the new procedural rules entered into force on the 1st of January 2012, he was requested to give his opinion in five cases between 2012 and 2014, including to present his position concerning the validity of foreign exchange loan contracts.
In her speech, President HANDÓ pointed out that, despite the changes in its structure, the Hungarian judiciary had achieved notable successes in recent years, in particular in the field of the timely adjudication of disputes, which had made the improvement of the Hungarian justice system visible even at European Union level. The Curia significantly contributed to the above successes through its jurisprudence-analysing work, its network of senior advisors and its internship programme.
Subsequently, the presidents of the so called publication panels of the Curia reported on the activities of their respective panels. The members of these panels decide unanimously on the publication of court decisions of principle rendered by the Curia and court rulings of principle delivered by lower instance courts. The published decisions and rulings have a kind of precedent character in respect of the Curia.
At the end of the Plenary Session, Mr. Tibor KALAS, Head of the Administrative and Labour Department of the Curia reported on the activities of the so called public law panel that is given the task of remedying violations of fundamental rights via procedural means following the establishment of violations by the Constitutional Court as a result of constitutional complaints. Finally, Mr. Géza BARTAL, Head of the Curia’s Judicial Council reported on the 2014 activities of the Judicial Council.
Budapest, the thirteenth of May 2015
Press Office of the Curia of Hungary