Part I — Situation overview

The European Commission published its seventh annual rule-of-law report on Friday, 17 July 2026, which evaluates, besides the 27 member states, four candidate countries along four pillars — judicial independence, anti-corruption safeguards, media freedom, institutional checks and balances. The Hungary chapter is the first comprehensive, official EU evaluation since the April change of government, and it paints a dual picture. On the acknowledging side: according to the Commission, progress has been made in the reform of the asset-declaration system and in the measures affecting civil organisations, and Michael McGrath, the Commissioner for Democracy and Justice, highlighted at the press conference the new Hungarian laws increasing transparency and creating anti-corruption instruments; according to an EU official, part of the questions judged gravely problematic last year — among them the winding-up of the sovereignty-protection office — has already largely been settled by the new government. On the acceleration list, however, stands that no progress has been made in making the case allocation of the lower courts more transparent and in the predictable, structured pay rise of judges, prosecutors and court staff; there is still no comprehensive regulation of lobbying and of movement between the public and private sectors — as an example of the revolving-door phenomenon the report cites precisely former foreign minister Péter Szijjártó’s move to BYD —; and the transparency of the distribution of state advertising is not settled either.

The stakes of the report are this time not abstract: the conditionality system of the funds due from the suspended cohesion and recovery fund (RRF — the EU’s post-pandemic reconstruction programme) is tied to this evaluation; in Portfolio’s formulation the document “may mark out the path ahead of the Tisza government”. The report’s EU-wide picture is at once encouraging and cautionary: the Commission sees an “overall positive trajectory”, but the full or partial fulfilment rate of the 2025 recommendations is 47 per cent at EU level — after 57 per cent last year. In addition, McGrath announced: by the end of the year the Commission will table a new anti-corruption package, part of which is the review and strengthening of the regulation of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO — the Luxembourg-based EU prosecution authority investigating criminal offences harming the EU budget).

MIAK’s reading: the report is a recommendation genre — not a sanction, not a court judgment and not a diktat either, but an external yardstick applied to every member state with the same methodology. Precisely for this reason it is worth guarding against two kinds of discrediting framing: the “Brussels demands again” grievance reading and the “everything is fine” victory bulletin would equally obscure the essence — that the Hungarian rule-of-law restoration is its own programme, and every item of the acceleration list is at the same time a Hungarian programme point.

Part II — Literature foundation

Before turning to MIAK’s proposals, it is worth fixing the interpretive frame. Joseph Raz (Oxford legal philosopher, one of the leading figures of legal positivism), in The Authority of Law, defines the rule of law along formal criteria — rules promulgated in advance, clear and stable, an independent judiciary, the government’s subjection to law — and warns that the concept is not the collective name of every good thing but one well-circumscribed virtue of the legal system: precisely this outlook makes it possible for the Commission’s annual report to examine verifiable sub-criteria instead of tickable slogans. The foundational study Governance Matters by Daniel Kaufmann and his World Bank research colleagues ordered the quality of governance — including the rule of law — into measurable, aggregated indicators, and showed empirically that better governance goes with better development outcomes; that is, rule-of-law reform is not “Brussels paperwork” but a measurable welfare factor. And Corruption and Government by Susan Rose-Ackerman (professor of law and political science at Yale University, pioneer of the economics of corruption) shows that corruption is not an individual character flaw but a structural-incentive phenomenon, which can be mitigated by institutional reform and international coordination — this is the interpretive frame of the EPPO-strengthening package and of the Hungarian accession. The detailed literature treatment — by author, with quotations — can be found in the 6.4 Literature in detail section.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures.

3.1 A public reform timetable for every recommendation (within 90 days)

The government should translate every recommendation of the report’s Hungary chapter into a public timetable: per recommendation a responsible ministry, a deadline and a metric — by the principle of Peter F. Drucker (Austrian-American management thinker, founder of the methodology of organisational effectiveness measurement), what is measurable can be called to account. The timetable should be refreshed quarterly, and should cover the judicial items too: making the case allocation of the lower courts transparent and the structured settlement of the judicial-prosecutorial pay path — for the latter the law is made by the National Assembly, with the government answering for the pace as proposer. This is the direct application of the A6 checks and balances, the I4 judicial independence and the I1 court transparency programme points; and the Razian formal criteria list (see 6.4.1) guarantees that the reform advances not in labels but in verifiable sub-conditions. The Venice Commission’s standards provide a guardrail here: the judicial reform may not replace a “government-loyal judiciary” with a “new-government-loyal judiciary”.

3.2 Completing the EPPO accession and the competence alignment of the NVVH (before the autumn EU package appears)

The government should complete the process of accession to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, and — still before the appearance of the Commission’s end-of-year anti-corruption package — prepare the competence alignment of the National Asset Recovery and Protection Office (NVVH — the public-asset-protection office created in July by the seventeenth amendment of the Fundamental Law) and the EPPO: which case type belongs to which institution, how case handover happens, and who answers for the criminal-law protection of EU funds. The order is not indifferent: if the EU accountability architecture expands, staying out and competence overlap are equally costly — the former produces a credibility deficit, the latter a procedural one. This is the logic of the A10 independent corruption investigation and the A14 international institutional accountability programme points, in Rose-Ackerman’s frame (see 6.4.3): the key to protection against grand corruption is a control point independent of national discretion.

3.3 Tabling a revolving-door and lobbying law (autumn session)

The government should table in the autumn session the two legislative items the report misses: comprehensive lobbying regulation (a public lobbying register, meeting logs at decision-makers) and rules on movement between the public and private sectors — the revolving-door phenomenon — with a waiting period and a conflict-of-interest review. The Szijjártó case, which the EU report now also cites as an example, showed: the regulatory gap is not an abstract risk but an actual occurrence. The report’s international outlook warns at the same time that this is not a Hungarian peculiarity — Denmark has no ministerial revolving-door rule either, and Sweden only recently adopted a lobbying-registration law —, so Hungary now has the opportunity not to catch up but to take the lead. The item builds on the A6 programme point, and in the spirit of the KP17 issue-based coalition-building it can also be represented as a Hungarian initiative in the Council negotiations after the report.

The common principle of the three proposals: the best answer to the rule-of-law report is not communication but a timetable. According to the empirical result of Kaufmann and his co-authors (see 6.4.2), the quality of governance is measurable and stands in causal relation with welfare — the reform is thus made not for Brussels but for the Hungarian growth and confidence indicators.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Rule of law The public timetable makes the reform verifiable; the 2027 report can record measurable improvement A rushed judicial reform can create new dependencies — bypassing the Venice Commission standards backfires
EU funds Milestone-based fulfilment can speed up the release of the suspended cohesion and RRF funds The EU “loss of momentum” narrative can slow the negotiations — documenting the Hungarian fulfilment is therefore critical
Political culture The revolving-door and lobbying law binds every future government — a systemic, not an individual, correction If the regulation is tailored only to the cases of the past, it hollows into symbolic politics; the yardstick is credible only universally

The main dilemma stretches between speed and quality: the RRF deadlines reward fast legislation, the rule-of-law standards the considered kind. The resolution is phasing — the lobbying register and the timetable require no long codification, while the judicial pay path and the case-allocation reform do; sliding the two together would worsen both. A separate risk is that if the EPPO alignment fails to happen, the NVVH and the EU prosecution authority may investigate in parallel in the same case — this would not increase the strength of protection, but would reduce legal certainty.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth tracking? (proposed KPIs)

MIAK proposes tracking four key performance indicators (KPIs):

  • Recommendation fulfilment rate: in the Hungary chapter of the 2027 rule-of-law report, the share of fully or partially fulfilled recommendations should reach at least 60 per cent (the 2026 EU average is 47 per cent).
  • EPPO accession: the formal completion of the accession process and the appointment of the first Hungarian delegated prosecutors by the end of 2026.
  • Legislative items: tabling of the lobbying and revolving-door law in the autumn session, adoption by spring 2027.
  • Perceived judicial independence: the Hungarian indicator of the EU Justice Scoreboard (the EU’s justice results table) should move off its current low point towards the above-50-per-cent target fixed in the I4 programme point.

5.2 Summary

MIAK asks the government to treat the rule-of-law report as a work list: within 90 days a public timetable with owners and deadlines should be prepared for every recommendation, in the autumn the lobbying and revolving-door law should come before the National Assembly, and the country should complete the EPPO accession before the appearance of the EU anti-corruption package.

Two MIAK foundational values are at stake in the case. Accountability is here an institutional question: the revolving-door rule and the EU prosecution authority are not the adversary of the current government but the external control of every government at any time — the yardstick is credible if it applies to the present administration just as to the previous one. Data-drivenness, in turn, is the methodology of the reform: the report, the governance indicators and the timetable metrics follow the same logic — what can be called to account must be measured, and what is measured must be called to account.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 The press framing by spectrum

The domestic left-liberal and public-affairs band focused on the draft report’s reform list: HVG, following Politico’s information, put the “urges reforms” framing in its headline, while 24.hu listed the concrete deficit areas (case allocation, pay settlement, lobbying rules) and added the governmental context — the establishment of the NVVH and the intention of EPPO accession. The economic band (Portfolio) framed from the direction of the funds: the report, in its words, “may mark out the path ahead of the Tisza government”, that is, it read the document primarily as a release schedule for the suspended EU money. The pro-government-conservative band (Magyar Nemzet, Mandiner) did not rank the report’s arrival among its highlighted topics on the day examined — their front pages were dominated by criticism of the constitutional transition and the public-safety debate.

The international press framing differs in emphasis: Balkan Insight highlighted the Central-Eastern European overall picture (“marked but uneven improvements”), EUobserver put the announced anti-corruption package and the EPPO strengthening in its headline, reading the Hungarian chapter from the direction of the “still unsettled questions”, while Euractiv — per its headline — diagnosed the EU-level exhaustion of the rule-of-law reform momentum (the article was not publicly downloadable). The framing difference is itself a lesson: the same document is at home a funds schedule, in Brussels an institutional test of strength.

6.2 Facts and data

Indicator Value Source
Full or partial fulfilment of the 2025 recommendations (EU-27) 47% (57% the previous year) EC Rule of Law Report 2026
Countries examined by the report 27 member states + 4 candidates (Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia) EC Rule of Law Report 2026
Hungary — government effectiveness (WGI 2024) +0.42 World Bank WGI
Hungary — rule of law (WGI 2024) +0.35 World Bank WGI
Hungary — control of corruption (WGI 2024) −0.17 World Bank WGI
  • The Commission has published the annual rule-of-law report since 2020, this year for the seventh time; it examines four pillars: judicial independence, anti-corruption frameworks, media freedom, institutional checks and balances.
  • For Hungary the report acknowledges the progress of the asset-declaration reform and of the measures affecting civil organisations; it misses the transparency of case allocation, the structuredness of the judicial-prosecutorial pay settlement, the lobbying and revolving-door regulation, and the transparency of state advertising distribution.
  • According to Commissioner McGrath’s announcement, the review of the EPPO regulation and a comprehensive overview of the EU anti-fraud architecture will come before the Commission by the end of the year.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Justice (programme points) — the institutional guarantees of judicial independence (I4), the data-driven transparency of court operation (I1);
  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — checks and balances (A6), media pluralism and state advertising (A7), independent corruption investigation (A10), international accountability (A14);
  • Foreign policy (programme points) — the Council negotiations after the report and issue-based coalition-building (KP17).

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Joseph Raz: The Authority of Law

In his rule-of-law chapter Raz starts from the observation that political fashion tends to stretch the concept into a collective name for every good cause — against this he insists on the narrow, formal sense: the rule of law means that the government acts subject to law, according to rules promulgated in advance, clear and stable, under the control of functioning, independent courts. The rule of law is for him one virtue of a legal system among others — not identical with democracy, justice or human rights, and precisely this boundedness makes it callable to account. The methodology of the EU rule-of-law report follows this logic: it does not grade “good governance” in general, but checks sub-criteria — case-allocation order, appointment procedure, pay-path predictability. For the Hungarian reform timetable the lesson is: rule-of-law restoration is a sequence not of symbolic declarations but of verifiable sub-conditions, and a metric can be assigned to every sub-condition.

📖 Source: Joseph Raz: The Authority of Law

6.4.2 Daniel Kaufmann and his co-authors: Governance Matters

The World Bank foundational study by Kaufmann, Kraay and Zoido-Lobatón ordered more than three hundred governance indicators into six aggregated measures — among them the dimensions of the rule of law and control of corruption —, and showed on the data of more than a hundred and fifty countries that “a strong causal relationship runs from better governance to better development outcomes”: higher per capita income, lower infant mortality, higher literacy. The methodology is the basis of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI — the World Bank’s governance indicator system) still in use today, on which Hungary’s control-of-corruption indicator currently stands in negative territory. In this frame the report’s Hungary chapter is not a diplomatic document but a development-policy instrument: if the reforms show up in the indicators too, that has a measurable welfare return — from the shrinking of the confidence premium to investment appetite.

📖 Source: Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay and Pablo Zoido-Lobatón: Governance Matters (World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper 2196)

6.4.3 Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government

Rose-Ackerman’s central proposition is that corruption is not the individual problem of “bad apples” but a structural-incentive phenomenon: it grows back wherever the regulatory environment leaves monopoly position, broad discretion and weak accountability. She treats grand corruption separately — the abuses forming at the top level of government, around large public procurements and concessions —, and stresses the role of international coordination: national control institutions are vulnerable on their own, because they can become captives of the domestic political field. The EPPO-strengthening package and the Hungarian accession gain their meaning in this frame: the EU prosecution authority is precisely the control point that can act independently of national discretion in cases affecting EU money — staying out is thus not a sovereignty gain but an accountability gap.

📖 Source: Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government — Causes, Consequences, and Reform

6.5 International comparison

The report’s regional examples show well that the items of the acceleration list have elsewhere already become legislative reality: in Bulgaria a reform protecting the Supreme Judicial Council from political influence was adopted last year, in Romania lobbying rules for members of parliament were born, and in Croatia, Slovakia, Greece and Slovenia the distribution of state advertising is settled by law — while the same remains, according to the report, unsettled in Hungary. In revolving-door regulation the picture is mixed at EU level too: Denmark has no rule applying to ministers, Sweden only recently introduced the registration obligation of lobbyists, and in Spain the lobbying law has lain before parliament for years. The lesson is twofold: Hungary is not alone with the deficiencies, but the regional competitors are already in motion — and the Slovak example (the constitutional amendment questioning the primacy of EU law) also shows how fast a member state can move from the positive trajectory to the top of the report’s worry list.

Justice

  • I4 — Protection of judicial independence
  • I1 — Judicial transparency

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A6 — Strengthening checks and balances
  • A7 — Media pluralism as an institutional guarantee
  • A10 — Independent Corruption Investigation Office
  • A14 — International institutional participation and accountability

Foreign policy

  • KP17 — Issue-based coalition-building in the EU

Proposed new programme point: A public rule-of-law recommendation-tracking timetable (owner–deadline–metric) — for the Transparency and anti-corruption policy area.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 17 July 2026 — topic 4, supplemented with the sources of topic 1 of the foreign press monitor of 18 July 2026):

Knowledge-base references (literature):

  • 📖 Joseph Raz: The Authority of Law
  • 📖 Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay and Pablo Zoido-Lobatón: Governance Matters
  • 📖 Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government — Causes, Consequences, and Reform

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Justice (programme points; programme point ID: I4, I1)
  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A6, A10, A14)
  • MIAK policy area: Foreign policy (programme points; programme point ID: KP17)
  • MIAK press monitor, 17 July 2026 — topic 4, score: 85/100
  • MIAK foreign press monitor, 18 July 2026 — topic 1, score: 84/100 (merged into this post)

Additional public data sources:

  • EC Rule of Law Report 2026 (Hungary chapter)
  • World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators 2024
  • EU Justice Scoreboard
  • EPPO annual report

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