Part I — Situation overview

On 13 August 2026 it became public that the office of Speaker Ágnes Forsthoffer, exercising the powers of the President of the Republic, did not sign the appointment as brigadier general of Attila Szuvák, the current deputy director general of the Military National Security Service (KNBSZ) — the military intelligence service falling under the defence portfolio. According to the office’s reply, the ground for the refusal is legal, not professional and not political: at the end of July the defence portfolio initiated at one and the same time the establishment of the professional service relationship and the promotion, even though the two cannot be dealt with in a single submission. In the office’s position, the taking into the professional corps has to be settled first, and only thereafter, if the statutory conditions are fulfilled, can the appointment as brigadier general be requested. The person concerned — who was placed in retirement as a colonel in 2023, previously served as a military attaché and then was responsible for organising the training of military attachés — has, according to the office’s information, been a professional soldier again since 1 August 2026. Some members of the defence forces and of the service corps speaking anonymously also formulated professional and conflict-of-interest objections against his person; these were confirmed neither by the government nor by the portfolio, and according to the office’s communication this was not the ground of the refusal. One day later, on 14 August, the defence portfolio replaced the chief of cabinet of Defence Minister Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi: the task was taken over by the former head of press, while the ministry also disputed that his predecessor had ever held this post.

The public-law background can be described precisely. Under point e) of Article 9(4) of the Fundamental Law the President of the Republic appoints and promotes generals; under paragraph (5) the countersignature of a member of the Government is required for this; and paragraph (6) states that the President refuses performance if the statutory conditions are absent, or if he or she concludes on reasonable grounds that it would result in a serious disturbance of the democratic functioning of the organisation of the state. The grammatical mood of the wording matters: this is not a veto right freely exercisable, but an obligation — if the statutory condition is absent, the head of state may not deliberate but is obliged to refuse. In the present situation, while the office of President of the Republic is unfilled, on the basis of Article 14(1) of the Fundamental Law the presidential powers are exercised by the Speaker of the National Assembly until the new President takes office — the office therefore acted not on an extraordinary authorisation but in the order of substitution laid down in the Fundamental Law.

On MIAK’s reading this case is the week’s cleanest public-law textbook case, and its very ordinariness is what matters in it. The refusal is not a conflict with the executive power but the enforcement of a condition of validity: promotion is not legally interpretable in the case of a person who at the moment of the submission is not in the professional corps. From the point of view of MIAK’s credibility, however, the decisive thing is that it should classify this in the same way even when the check operates against the personnel proposal of the current government — the programme point on checks and balances (A6) is not a government-dependent yardstick. The character of the problem therefore lies not in the decision but in what is missing around it: the legal basis of the refusal emerged only from a press reply, and the suitability of the leader taking over the service has no yardstick fixed in advance and made public — so the debate is necessarily about persons, not about conditions.

Part II — Foundations in the literature

Three sources provide the interpretative frame. The Fundamental Law as an official source of law records not only the competence but also the public-law position of the President of the Republic: according to the official reasoning attached to the law, the head of state is “a power factor separate from the executive power and independent”, who watches over the democratic functioning of the organisation of the state — that is, the act of appointment is not the transmission of governmental will but an independent control point. In his work The Spirit of the Laws (1748) the French legal philosopher Montesquieu, the classical formulator of the theory of the separation of powers, gives the proposition that explains why this separation is needed: where the same actor legislates and executes, liberty is lost, because nothing outside the power itself limits it. And in his work The Concept of Law (1961) the British legal philosopher H. L. A. Hart, a defining figure of twentieth-century legal theory, offers the most precise conceptual tool for the present case: he distinguishes duty-imposing rules from power-conferring rules, and points out that with the latter invalidity is not a punishment but a consequence flowing from the nature of the rule. If the condition of validity is absent, the act simply does not come into being. The detailed treatment of the literature — source by source, with quotations — can be found in the 6.4 Literature in detail section.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes two measurable measures. Neither is aimed at extending the powers of the head of state — both make visible and predictable what today remains closed to the public.

MIAK proposes that the office of the President of the Republic — and also the office of the Speaker of the National Assembly exercising the powers as substitute — should, in the case of the refusal of any act of appointment or promotion, publish a short public statement indicating which limb of Article 9(6) of the Fundamental Law it invokes: the absence of the statutory conditions, or the reasonable conclusion concerning a serious disturbance of the democratic functioning of the organisation of the state. The public-law weight of the two grounds differs fundamentally. The first is technical in character: it asserts that the submission is defective and can be resubmitted after correction — according to the office’s reply the present case is of this kind. The second, by contrast, is substantive and serious: it asserts that the proposed person or act would endanger the functioning of the democratic organisation of the state, and this is a finding with political consequences. If the public does not know which of the two is at issue, every such decision is automatically interpreted as a political conflict — even when it is in fact about the correction of a documentation error. The proposal requires no amendment of legislation, only a consistent information practice, and can be derived directly from the programme point on checks and balances (A6); and in the Hartian frame (see 6.4.3) it makes visible precisely whether a condition of validity or a substantive objection is at stake.

3.2 A public set of suitability conditions for the heads of the national security services (by the first half of 2027)

MIAK proposes that by the end of the first half of 2027 a set of suitability conditions fixed in advance should be drawn up for the heads and deputy heads of the national security services, and that the government should also promulgate it. This should contain four elements: the minimum professional experience expected, defined in years and in field; a verifiable requirement of leadership experience; proof that the national security vetting and the conflict-of-interest examination have been carried out before the nomination is submitted; and the procedural order of nomination, including the sequence of the necessary submissions — that is, precisely what the absence of caused the present case. The set of conditions would not extend the publicity of the operation of the services — given the sensitivity of the data that would not even be justified — but the publicity of the yardstick of selection: what we expect of a service head is not classified information. The proposal is an extension of the programme point on the official-selection and rotation system (KI7) to the national security field, and applies the same principle that MIAK also raised in connection with the leadership selection at the National Asset Recovery and Asset Protection Office: the yardstick should be known before the application, not disputable afterwards. The programme point on the transparency of defence expenditure (HV2) provides for this the pattern that the defence field is not a homogeneous secret either: the framework of procurement and personnel procedures can be public without the content of the operation being so.

The two proposals are held together by a single principle: a control point works if, alongside its result, its yardstick is also visible. Montesquieu’s argument (see 6.4.2) reminds us that the condition of limiting power is separation — in the present case this was realised. Hart’s proposition (see 6.4.3) explains why what happened is not a conflict but regularity. And the text of the Fundamental Law (see 6.4.1) gives the two legal bases of sharply differing weight, of which the public today does not know which is at issue — and MIAK’s proposals would fill precisely this gap.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Public law and institutional functioning The practice is strengthened that the head of state’s signature is a substantive check of validity, not a formality — this applies equally to every future government If the legal basis of refusals regularly remains obscure, decisions are interpreted as political conflict, and the credibility of the check erodes
Defence and national security A public set of suitability conditions reduces the uncertainty around the appointment of service heads and the tension within the service Too rigid a definition of the conditions may narrow the pool of candidates in a field with an already small professional catchment
Public administration Fixing the sequence of submissions filters out this type of procedural error and speeds up case handling If resubmission drags on, the leadership of the service remains in a lastingly provisional state, which is an operational risk
The public Stating the legal basis prompts the press too to report more precisely, and reduces the space for speculation The publicity of details raises questions of personality rights: the legal basis can be communicated, an assessment relating to the person cannot

The most important question of weighing runs between publicity and personality rights, and cannot be resolved by a simple rule. The refusal of an appointment is always about a concrete human being whose professional assessment is not common property — publishing in the press unconfirmed professional objections originating from anonymous sources is therefore in itself problematic, and MIAK does not regard these as well-founded facts. At the same time, communicating the legal basis is not a question of personality rights: which constitutional provision an office invokes is data of public interest, and communicating it protects precisely the person concerned from speculation as well. The proposal tips over to the risk side if, once the communication of the legal basis has become practice, the office were to refuse appointments invoking the second, graver limb without substantively reasoning its conclusion — that would be a substantive extension of the head of state’s competence, which is already the subject of genuine public-law debate. MIAK’s proposal is therefore expressly aimed at stating the legal basis, and not at detailing the reasoning.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth following? (proposed KPIs)

MIAK proposes three performance indicators (KPIs, Key Performance Indicators) for monitoring:

  • The proportion of refusal decisions published with a statement of the legal basis, relative to all refusals — annual publication proposed. This is the basic indicator: if it does not approach one hundred per cent, the information practice remains occasional.
  • The number of appointment and promotion proposals sent back because of a defective submission — annual publication proposed in the office’s report. If this number is persistently high, that is not a sign of the head of state’s strictness but of the procedural shortcomings of the submitting portfolios.
  • The proportion of leadership positions covered by a public set of suitability conditions in the national security and defence field — half-yearly monitoring proposed until the set of conditions is completed. From this it can be seen whether proposal 3.2 was realised on paper or in practice.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s request can be summed up in two points: when refusing an act of appointment or promotion, the office should state publicly which limb of the Fundamental Law it invokes — the absence of the statutory conditions or a disturbance of democratic functioning — because the weight of the two differs fundamentally; and by the end of the first half of 2027 a set of suitability conditions promulgated in advance should be drawn up for the heads of the national security services. From the public MIAK asks that it should not read this case as a government-versus-opposition question: the enforcement of a condition of validity is not a political attack, and a check is credible if it works in the same way against the personnel proposals of every government.

Two of MIAK’s foundational values are in play in this case. Ideology-free analysis, because MIAK says now what it would say under another government: the functioning of checks and balances as intended is good news even when it is stopping the proposal of the very government several of whose policy steps MIAK has found supportable. And accountability, because a decision is accountable if its legal basis is also known: the substance of the present refusal was right, but its communication was realised only at the level of a press reply. A constitutional check is strong not because it worked once — but because the yardstick of its functioning is readable in advance and by everyone.

Part VI — Reasoning and further sources

6.1 The press framing by spectrum

The liberal-left and public-affairs band worked with a double framing, and the difference between the emphases is instructive. Telex placed the office’s legal ground at the centre of its report, while also setting out in detail the objections formulated anonymously by the service corps — that is, it ran the legal and the personal thread alongside each other. 444.hu, by contrast, expressly separated the two, and highlighted as the most important sentence of the report that the refusal happened not on professional and not on political but on legal grounds; it mentioned the personal objections in the past tense, referring back to an earlier report. 24.hu put the emphasis on the person of the nominator, that is, it framed the story as a personnel decision of the head of the defence portfolio.

The economic band brought the news in a procedural frame, in minimalist fashion. Portfolio communicated the fact — the office did not sign the appointment — supplemented by the office’s legal ground, but did not take over the unconfirmed reports about tension within the service. This framing is the narrowest, and at the same time the least misleading: it contains precisely the two elements confirmed from an official source.

The pro-government conservative band raised the fact of the rejection into the headline, naming the nominating minister and handling the legal ground more reservedly — that is, from the same news it built a reading pointing to the failure of government personnel policy. What is striking looking at the spectrum as a whole: the legal ground appeared in every band, but its weight differed sharply band by band. This difference of framing in itself supports proposal 3.1: if the office itself published the legal basis, the difference of weighting between the bands would be not about the existence of the fact but at most about its evaluation.

6.2 Facts and data

Data Value Source
The day of the refusal became known on 13 August 2026 Telex, 444.hu, 24.hu, Portfolio
The office holder acting the Speaker of the National Assembly, exercising the powers of the President of the Republic as substitute Telex, 444.hu
The ground of the refusal legal: the simultaneous initiation of taking into the professional corps and of promotion is not possible Telex, 444.hu
The office’s request first the initiation of taking into the professional corps, then — if the conditions are fulfilled — the appointment as brigadier general 444.hu
The legal status of the person concerned a professional soldier again since 1 August 2026 Telex, 444.hu
Previous legal status placed in retirement as a colonel in 2023 Telex, 444.hu
Constitutional legal basis — appointment Fundamental Law, Article 9(4) e): the President of the Republic appoints and promotes generals Fundamental Law of Hungary
Constitutional legal basis — countersignature Fundamental Law, Article 9(5): the countersignature of a member of the Government is required Fundamental Law of Hungary
Constitutional legal basis — refusal Fundamental Law, Article 9(6): performance is refused if the statutory conditions are absent, or if on reasonable grounds a serious disturbance of democratic functioning is concluded Fundamental Law of Hungary
Constitutional legal basis — substitution Fundamental Law, Article 14(1): the presidential powers are exercised by the Speaker of the National Assembly until the new President takes office Fundamental Law of Hungary
Related personnel step 14 August 2026, a change in the post of chief of cabinet at the defence portfolio Telex, HVG

Two remarks for interpretation. First, the table deliberately does not contain the professional and conflict-of-interest objections of the service corps originating from anonymous sources: these are unconfirmed assertions which neither the portfolio nor the office endorsed, and which according to the office’s communication did not provide the ground of the refusal either. Mentioning them is justified in analysing the framing of the press, but treating them as fact is not. Second, the row on the chief of cabinet change is a separate case: it appears in the analysis because in time and in theme it is linked to the personnel decisions of the defence portfolio, but neither a legal nor a causal connection can be established between it and the refusal of the appointment.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Defence (programme points) — the programme point on the transparency of defence expenditure (programme point ID: HV2) gives the pattern according to which the procedural frameworks of the defence field can be public without the content of the operation being so; this principle can be extended to the set of suitability conditions under proposal 3.2;
  • Public administration and e-government (programme points) — the official-selection and rotation system (programme point ID: KI7) is the direct programme-point antecedent of the present case: it demands precisely the public selection yardstick fixed in advance, the absence of which turned the debate into a question of persons;
  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — the strengthening of checks and balances (programme point ID: A6) gives the frame in which the refusal can be evaluated not as conflict but as functioning as intended; and the spin-dictatorship prevention index (programme point ID: A9) gives the measurement perspective of whether the formal control points work substantively as well;
  • Justice (programme points) — according to the methodology of the constitutionality stress test (programme point ID: I10), such cases are precisely the real trials on which the resilience of the constitutional system of checks can be measured.

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Fundamental Law of Hungary — the powers of the President of the Republic

The text of the Fundamental Law contains every essential element of the present case, and the official reasoning attached to it also provides the interpretative frame of the provisions. Article 9(6) reads as follows:

“The President of the Republic shall refuse to perform the acts set out in points b)–e) of paragraph (4) if the statutory conditions are absent, or if he or she concludes on reasonable grounds that it would result in a serious disturbance of the democratic functioning of the organisation of the state.”

The public-law place of the provision is fixed by the official reasoning when it states that “the President of the Republic is a power factor separate from the executive power and independent”, whose purpose under the Fundamental Law is to “watch over the democratic functioning of the organisation of the state”.

The Hungarian reading yields three lessons. The first is grammatical but decisive in public law: the text uses the form shall refuse, not may refuse — that is, in the absence of a statutory condition the head of state has no room for deliberation but has an obligation. In the present case it is therefore not that an office holder made use of a possibility, but that he or she fulfilled the prescription. The second is that the paragraph names two grounds of sharply differing weight, and the public today does not know from an official source which one the office invoked — this gives the direct justification for proposal 3.1. The third is that because of the countersignature rule the system is bidirectional: without the government there is no appointment, but the government itself cannot appoint either — both elements of the double lock worked as intended in this case.

📖 Source: Fundamental Law of Hungary (text in force on 17 April 2026), Article 9(4)–(6), Article 14(1)

6.4.2 Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws

Montesquieu formulates the classical proposition of the separation of the branches of power as the condition of liberty, and the core of the argument is not the enumeration of competences but the requirement of independence:

“When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.”

To this Montesquieu also adds that the speed of the executive power is in itself an advantage, but “this speed may degenerate into precipitation”, and the laws therefore have to give means of slowing it down.

The Hungarian reading is direct. The procedural order of a general’s appointment is precisely such a slowing structure: the submission starts from the executive power, but the signature lies with an actor separate from it, who has no interest in speeding up the submission but has a duty to check the conditions of validity. On Montesquieu’s argument a check works not because the one who exercises it is stricter or braver, but because it does not depend on the one it checks — it is therefore essential that in the present situation too the decision was taken in the constitutional order of substitution, in an independent competence, and not in governmental deliberation. This is why MIAK treats the present case as the functioning of the system as intended, and not as an institutional conflict.

📖 Source: Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws

6.4.3 H. L. A. Hart: The Concept of Law

Hart’s most important contribution to understanding the present case is the distinction he draws between duty-imposing and power-conferring rules. With the latter — such is every competence of appointment, contracting or law-making — invalidity is not a sanction:

“The idea that invalidity is also to be classed here is a source (and a sign) of confusion. […] It is still more absurd to regard as a sanction the fact that a legislative measure, if it does not attain the required majority, does not attain the status of law.”

On Hart’s argument, power-conferring rules have to be viewed precisely from the perspective of those who exercise them: these rules do not prohibit or punish, but determine the conditions under which a valid legal act comes into being.

The Hungarian reading follows directly from this. In Hart’s frame the refusal of the promotion to general is not a punishment of the person concerned, nor a political veto against the government, but the finding that a condition of the act’s coming into being was absent: taking a retired person into the professional corps and simultaneously promoting him does not constitute a valid legal sequence. This conceptual clarification matters because public discourse regularly reads such cases as conflict — yet if invalidity is not a sanction, then the enforcement of a condition of validity is not an attack either. At the same time, Hart’s proposition also gives proposal 3.1 its edge: the public can distinguish a validity objection from a substantive objection only if the office itself says which of the two is at issue.

📖 Source: H. L. A. Hart: The Concept of Law

6.5 International comparison

Civil control over military and intelligence leadership appointments exists everywhere in allied practice, but at different bodies. In the United States promotions to general are confirmed by the Senate, that is, the control lies with the legislature and involves a public hearing — the transparency of the procedure is high, in exchange for which the process can be slow and politically loaded. In Germany military leadership appointments are made on a proposal of the federal government, with the head of state’s signature, while parliamentary control is ensured by the institution of the parliamentary commissioner dealing with the affairs of the armed forces, who also receives soldiers’ complaints. In the United Kingdom the selection of service heads is governed by the civil service selection procedure, with a published role description and requirement profile, while the oversight of the services’ operation is carried out by a separate parliamentary committee.

The common lesson of the three solutions is that appointment control nowhere exhausts itself in a single signature: everywhere it is supplemented either by a public requirement profile or by a parliamentary oversight channel. In the Hungarian system the head of state’s validity check is strong and works well — the present case proves this — but of the two elements standing beside it, the public requirement profile is missing. This mapping shows that MIAK’s proposal does not ask for the surrender of the Hungarian particularity, but for the supply of a supplementary element customary in allied practice.

Defence

  • HV2 — Transparency of defence expenditure

Public administration and e-government

  • KI7 — Official-selection and rotation system

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A6 — Strengthening of checks and balances
  • A9 — Spin-dictatorship prevention index

Justice

  • I10 — Constitutionality “stress test”

Proposed new programme point: A public set of suitability conditions for the heads of the national security services — to the Defence area.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 14 August 2026 — topic 2):

Knowledge base references (professional literature and source of law):

  • 📖 Fundamental Law of Hungary (text in force on 17 April 2026)
  • 📖 Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws
  • 📖 H. L. A. Hart: The Concept of Law

Note: the local file path of the sources does not appear in the visible text of the blog — only the author and the title.

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Defence (programme points; programme point ID: HV2)
  • MIAK policy area: Public administration and e-government (programme points; programme point ID: KI7)
  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A6, A9)
  • MIAK policy area: Justice (programme points; programme point ID: I10)
  • MIAK legal foundations — background material on the powers of the head of state, on countersignature and on substitution
  • MIAK press monitor, 14 August 2026 — topic 2, score: 87/100

Supplementary public data sources:

  • Hungarian Official Gazette — appointment and promotion decisions
  • Act CXXV of 1995 on the National Security Services
  • Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) — comparative practice of civil control of the services
  • NATO — recommendations on civil-military relations in member states

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