Part I — Situation overview

The 34-page government decree that rearranged the tasks and competences of the members of the government was published in the Magyar Közlöny on 1 September 2026. The element that received the most attention was that the minister heading the Prime Minister’s Office, Bálint Ruff, took over the direction of the Defence Administration Office and of the National Information Centre, and thereby became the member of the Government responsible for directing the civilian national security services. An important clarification, which of the daily reports only HVG highlighted: it is not the whole circle of services that moved. The Constitution Protection Office and the Special Service for National Security remained with the Ministry of the Interior, and the Information Office with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The National Information Centre was created in 2022 by the transformation of the Counter Terrorism Information and Criminal Analysis Centre, and in the previous government cycle — together with the Defence Administration Office — it belonged to Antal Rogán. At the same time the decree also placed another, less noticed competence with the Prime Minister’s Office: the publication of the Magyar Közlöny and the promulgation of legislation, which had previously been the justice minister’s task.

The decree also contains several smaller rearrangements. Civil registration, the register of addresses, the register of driving records and passport affairs moved from the Ministry of the Interior to Zoltán Tanács, minister for science and technology, where electronic public administration already belonged in any case; in exchange the interior portfolio received the preparation of the rules on restraining orders in cases of violence between relatives. The competences of agriculture minister Szabolcs Bóna were expanded from several directions: he received oversight of equestrian sport, the official tasks connected with the welfare of farm animals, consumer protection competences relating to food from the economic portfolio, and the powers linked to the common agricultural policy from the rural development portfolio. Two further personnel items fell into the days around the publication of the decree. On the one hand, the mandates of Péter Polt and of three further constitutional judges expired, because all four had reached the age of seventy; the seventeenth amendment to the Fundamental Law, adopted in July, restored the upper age limit of 70 that had applied until 2013, and Parliament must elect new members within 60 days. On the other hand, finance minister András Kármán appointed the new president of the National Tax and Customs Administration, Mónika Rózsáné Sádt, together with her deputy for criminal and law enforcement affairs, Attila Sisák — 49 applications arrived in response to the public call, of which nine candidates went on to a hearing before the state secretary and then five to a ministerial hearing. In the same week, however, a deputy state secretary appointed barely two months earlier resigned at the rural development portfolio.

MIAK’s reading: the placement of intelligence oversight within the structure of government is not a technical question. One of the most criticised structural features of the past cycle was precisely that oversight of civilian intelligence and of the information offices belonged to a minister who was also responsible for government communication. If the new structure carries the same construction forward — under a different name, within the Prime Minister’s Office — then the structural risk remains unchanged, regardless of who holds the post. The situation is nevertheless not identical to the earlier one, because the circle of services is now divided between three ministries, and the present legislation does not create any new competence, it merely rearranges existing ones. The real gap lies elsewhere: no public map of competences was prepared alongside the decree that would show which statutory task landed where, and no impact assessment was prepared on what the change means for the operation of the bodies concerned. The quality of an organisational reform is not decided by who was placed above it, but by whether it can be reconstructed afterwards what went where and why.

Part II — Foundations in the literature

Three texts provide the interpretative frame for today’s situation. The Fundamental Law of Hungary sets out the hierarchy of legal sources and the chain of responsibility: acting within its competence, the Government issues decrees in subject matters not regulated by an Act, or on the basis of statutory authorisation, and within these limits a minister independently directs the branches of state administration falling within their portfolio. A member of the Government is responsible to Parliament for their activity, and a parliamentary committee may oblige them to appear at its sitting. Montesquieu (French legal philosopher, the classic formulator of the separation of powers) develops in The Spirit of the Laws the argument that liberty depends not on who exercises power, but on whether the different functions are kept separate from one another. And the work Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville (French political thinker, analyst of the workings of American democracy) introduces the distinction that is missing from today’s Hungarian debate: governmental and administrative centralisation are not the same thing, they can be separated, and it is the union of the two that creates truly great power. The detailed treatment of the literature — author by author, with quotations — can be found in section 6.4 Literature in detail.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures. The first two can be carried out within governmental competence, the third by a decision of Parliament.

3.1 A public map of competences for every government decree rearranging portfolios (from the next such decree onwards, and retroactively for the present one)

The decree just published lists the changes over 34 pages, in legislative language. In legal-technical terms this is in order, but for the public — and for the bodies applying the law — it is not a usable overview. MIAK proposes that every government decree rearranging tasks and competences be accompanied by a public map of no more than two pages, showing in three columns the task being transferred, the previous and the new responsible ministry, and the statutory basis of the task. The last of these is the most important element: the decree must show which statutory task the rearrangement relates to, because a government decree can neither create nor override a statutory competence. The map should also come with a short impact assessment of a few paragraphs on how many staff, which databases and which customer service points the change affects — the transfer of civil registration and passport administration, for example, has direct consequences for citizens. This is an extension of the I3 legislative impact assessment programme point to organisational acts. Tocqueville’s distinction (see 6.4.3) becomes a practical instrument here: the map shows whether a given step points towards governmental or towards administrative centralisation.

3.2 Structural separation of service oversight and government communication (in the first half of the government cycle)

In MIAK’s view, political oversight of the civilian national security services should belong to a member of the government who has no government communication or media supervision portfolio. This is not a personal question: the present arrangement is lawful, and the supervisory circle is divided between three ministries, which in itself reduces risk. The essence of the proposal is that this separation should be laid down in legislation, rather than depending on the organisational preferences of the prime minister of the day — precisely because the present decree, too, changed the arrangement of the previous cycle by way of a single government decree, and can be reversed by a single decree in the same way. MIAK asks the same for the competence of promulgating legislation: the publication of the Magyar Közlöny and the promulgation of legislation should not belong to the same ministry that also carries out oversight of the national security services. Montesquieu’s argument (see 6.4.2) is about exactly this: it is not the quality of the intention but the separation of functions that provides the guarantee. The proposal builds on the A6 checks and balances programme point and on A9, the latter being aimed expressly at preventing the political coupling of the information and intelligence functions.

3.3 Stronger parliamentary control and a public selection protocol for senior posts (in the next parliamentary session)

The second leg of control over the services is the parliamentary side. MIAK proposes that the post of chair of Parliament’s National Security Committee should by law necessarily belong to an opposition member, and that the committee should be given an independent right of budgetary scrutiny over the services, exercisable within a framework suitable for handling classified data. This proposal fills with content the chain of responsibility that follows from the Fundamental Law (see 6.4.1): a member of the Government is responsible to Parliament, and the committee may oblige them to appear — but this right is worth something only if the committee can also access, on its own, the data needed for scrutiny. The second half of the proposal concerns the personnel side. For the posts of deputy state secretary and head of office, MIAK proposes a public, points-based application protocol, with a conflict-of-interest filter and, for those in management posts, the wealth-proportionality certification under programme point KI7. This is not a theoretical request: the filling of the post of president of the tax authority took place in exactly this way in the same week — 49 applicants, nine candidates at a hearing before the state secretary, five candidates at a ministerial hearing — so the protocol exists and works. The proposal amounts to no more than extending it to the level where turnover actually takes place.

The three proposals are held together by a single principle: the freedom of governmental organisation is legitimate, but the exercise of that freedom should leave a trace. The map of competences shows what went where; the structural separation shows which functions may not end up in a single hand; and parliamentary control together with the selection protocol shows that the decision can be examined afterwards. None of them restricts the right of the prime minister of the day to organise the government according to their own conception.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Public administration The map of competences reduces transitional uncertainty in administration and in the application of the law Preparing the map slows the promulgation of the decree in the short term if it is not drawn up in parallel with the legislation
Rule of law Separating the functions at the level of legislation makes it harder for any later government to draw service oversight and government communication into a single hand A mandatory opposition committee chair may become unworkable if the parties use scrutiny as a political instrument
Public safety and national security Stronger parliamentary control, exercised within a classified framework, improves the legitimacy of the services An overly broad right of access carries an operational risk, so the entitlement has to be circumscribed precisely
Civil service A public selection protocol reduces turnover and disputes about professional suitability The protocol may become formalistic if the substantive decision is taken before the hearings

The main question to be weighed runs between the speed of governing and the counterweight to power. A new government has the right and the duty to reshape the organisational system, and Hungarian public law expressly allows this at the level of government decrees — precisely so that not every organisational fine-tuning should require an amendment to an Act. This flexibility is a value. At the same time flexibility has a price: what can be changed by a single decree can be reversed just as easily by the next government, and at every such turn the bodies applying the law, the clients and the public have to orient themselves anew. MIAK’s proposal therefore does not ask for the abolition of the decree level, but that documentation should accompany the decree. The package tips over to the risk side if the map of competences empties out into a bureaucratic form — which is why it is important that it should be short, and that indicating the statutory basis should remain a mandatory element of it.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth following? (proposed KPIs)

The performance indicators below (KPIs, Key Performance Indicators) are MIAK proposals, not government decisions:

  • Documentary coverage: how many of the government decrees rearranging portfolios were accompanied by a public map of competences and a short impact assessment — proposed target: 100% after 12 months.
  • Intensity of parliamentary control: the annual number of sittings of the National Security Committee and the number of agenda items brought before the committee, together with whether the chair’s post is held by an opposition member.
  • Transparency of senior selection: what percentage of appointments to deputy state secretary and head of office posts took place on the basis of published, points-based criteria — the benchmark already exists, provided by the selection of the tax authority’s president.
  • Retention time of senior officials: the average time spent in a deputy state secretary post — this is the indicator that shows the quality of the selection system most quickly.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s key message: the present rearrangement of competences is lawful and in itself not objectionable, but three things are missing alongside it. What is missing is the public map of competences, from which citizens and those applying the law could see on a single page what went where. What is missing is the separation, at the level of legislation, of service oversight and government communication, which would apply not to the present government but to every later one as well. And what is missing is a public selection protocol for senior posts, even though in the same week exactly such a procedure was carried out at the head of the tax authority. MIAK asks these three things of the government and of Parliament.

Two MIAK foundational values are in play here. Accountability, because a competence can be called to account only if it is possible to know who holds it — a 34-page legislative text is formally public but in practice is not, and the absence of publicity becomes the absence of responsibility. And being ideology-free, because MIAK asked the same standard of the previous governmental arrangement and will ask the same of the next: the coupling of intelligence oversight and government communication is a structural risk regardless of which political side stands at the head of the ministry. A good rule is good because it works even when it turns against those who made it.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 The framing of the press, spectrum by spectrum

In the liberal-left and general public affairs band, Telex chose the sharpest framing: in the headline it was the label “super intelligence service” and the naming of the previous supervisor that carried the story, while the text placed the organisation in historical context by referring to the creation of the National Information Centre in 2022 and to an earlier investigative piece. HVG, by contrast, gave a balance-sheet treatment: the lead itself set out which ministries were strengthened and which weakened, and — alone in the day’s press — it highlighted the clarification that the Constitution Protection Office and the Special Service for National Security remained with the interior ministry, and the Information Office with the foreign ministry. This detail decides how large the actual concentration of competences is, and it is the day’s single piece of information without which the news can be misunderstood. 24.hu ran the expiry of the constitutional judges’ mandates on a separate thread, with legal-historical background.

In the economic band, Portfolio worked up the personnel side: it reported the appointment of the tax authority’s new leaders together with the steps of the application procedure, and carried in a separate item the resignation of the rural development portfolio’s deputy state secretary, citing the official gazette.

In the pro-government and conservative band, Mandiner carried the two personnel items: the tax authority appointment as a statement of fact, but the departure of the deputy state secretary framed with an assessment from an opposition politician. Magyar Nemzet sharpened the story onto the network of personal connections within the government.

The most important difference between the bands here is not the tone but the extent of the coverage: the 34 pages of the decree contain several dozen changes of competence, but the daily press worked up in substance essentially a single element — the transfer of service oversight. No band dealt separately with the transfer of the competence to promulgate legislation, even though this is the other element that shifted a public-law function.

6.2 Facts and data

Datum Value Source
Publication of the decree 1 September 2026, Magyar Közlöny Telex and HVG, 1 September 2026
Length of the decree 34 pages Telex, 1 September 2026
Bodies moved to the Prime Minister’s Office Defence Administration Office, National Information Centre Telex and HVG, 1 September 2026
Services that remained with another ministry Constitution Protection Office and Special Service for National Security (interior), Information Office (foreign affairs) HVG, 1 September 2026
Creation of the National Information Centre 2022, by transformation of the Counter Terrorism Information and Criminal Analysis Centre Telex, 1 September 2026
Public-law competence transferred publication of the Magyar Közlöny and promulgation of legislation (from the justice portfolio) Telex and HVG, 1 September 2026
Transfer of registry competences civil registration, address, driving record, passport — from the interior ministry to the science and technology portfolio HVG, 1 September 2026
Expired constitutional judge mandates 4 persons, all having reached the age of 70 24.hu, 1 September 2026
Legal basis for restoring the age limit the 17th amendment to the Fundamental Law, adopted in July 2026 24.hu, 1 September 2026
Deadline for electing the new constitutional judges 60 days 24.hu, 1 September 2026
Applicants for the tax authority presidency 49 persons; 9 candidates at a state secretary hearing, 5 at a ministerial hearing Telex, 31 August 2026
Time in office of the resigned deputy state secretary 28 June – 31 August 2026 HVG and Portfolio, 31 August 2026

Two rows of the table together give the main proposition of this post. The row on the tax authority appointment shows that a public, multi-round, documented selection procedure exists and can be carried out in Hungarian public administration. The deputy state secretary row shows that at the very same level a mandate can also come to an end within two months — and since the detailed allocation of management tasks within ministries is not public, it cannot even be reconstructed which portfolio of tasks was left without an owner.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Public administration and e-government (programme points) — documentation of the rearrangement of competences, the system of selection and rotation of senior officials, the ex post evaluation of organisational operation;
  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — the institutional guarantees of control over the services, the separation of government communication and the information functions;
  • Justice (programme points) — the impact assessment obligation for organisational reforms and the delimitation of the levels of legal sources;
  • Public safety and law enforcement (background material) — the delimitation of national security and law enforcement portfolios between ministries.

Several public-law delimitations matter here. First: the rearrangement of tasks and competences is an act at the level of a government decree, not an amendment to an Act — a government decree cannot create a statutory competence and cannot conflict with an Act, so the decree only redistributes the tasks set out in legislation within the Government. Second: the expiry of the constitutional judges’ mandates is a matter concerning the Constitutional Court, not a prosecution service or ordinary court personnel matter — the two institutions must not be conflated even if the person concerned was once also prosecutor general. Third: electing the new constitutional judges is a competence of Parliament, not of the Government. Fourth: a member of the Government is responsible to Parliament for their activity, and a minister to the prime minister — the proposal to strengthen parliamentary committee control rests on this existing chain of responsibility, it does not create a new branch of power.

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 The Fundamental Law of Hungary

The Fundamental Law provides three precise rules for judging the present decree. The first is the Government’s law-making competence: acting within its competence, the Government issues decrees in subject matters not regulated by an Act, and on the basis of authorisation received in an Act — the detailed reasoning distinguishes these as original and as derivative law-making competence respectively, and states that a government decree may not conflict with an Act. The second is the rule of ministerial direction: within the framework of the general policy of the government, a minister independently directs the branches of state administration falling within their portfolio and the subordinate bodies, and performs the tasks determined by the Government or the prime minister. The third is the chain of responsibility:

“A member of the Government shall be responsible to Parliament for their activity, and a minister to the prime minister. […] Parliament and parliamentary committees may oblige a member of the Government to appear at their sitting.”

Three conclusions follow from this for today’s situation. On the one hand, carrying out the rearrangement of competences at the level of a decree is constitutionally in order — this level exists expressly for that purpose. On the other hand, precisely for that reason it creates no lasting guarantee: what one government decree has done, the next government decree can undo, so the separation of service oversight and government communication becomes a stable rule only if it is laid down at a higher level of legal source. Third, MIAK’s proposal to strengthen parliamentary control asks for no new entitlement, but for an existing constitutional entitlement — the power to oblige appearance and to demand accounts — to be filled with content.

📖 Source: The Fundamental Law of Hungary

6.4.2 Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws

The essence of Montesquieu’s argument is that political liberty depends not on the personal quality of the one exercising power but on the separation of functions. The classic formulation runs:

“When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty.”

In the same chapter the author mentions as an example the “state inquisitors” of the Italian republics and the public box into which anyone could at any time drop a written denunciation — that is, the contemporary institution of the coupling of secret information gathering with the exercise of power. For today’s question this example is more precise than the general delimitation of the branches of power: Montesquieu does not claim that there should be no intelligence service, but that it is the union of control over information with the other governmental functions that makes it dangerous.

Translated to the Hungarian situation, this provides the argument for MIAK’s proposal 3.2. The question is not whether the minister heading the Prime Minister’s Office is suited to the task — it is that oversight of part of the national security services and the promulgation of legislation ended up in the same ministry. The two functions are important in themselves, and together they form an accumulation that the classic argument says must be excluded not by intention but by structure.

📖 Source: Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws

6.4.3 Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America

In his chapter on centralisation, Tocqueville warns that the word circulates in everyday speech without a precise meaning, when in fact it covers two separable things. If the power directing general affairs is placed in one location, that is central government; if the power over partial and local affairs is, that is central administration. In the author’s view the two often go together, but they are not inseparable — and it is precisely their union that is decisive:

“It is evident that a central government acquires immense power when united to administrative centralization.”

The distinction gives a direct instrument for reading the present decree. The transfer of service oversight and of the promulgation of legislation is a step pointing towards governmental centralisation, because it takes national, general functions to a single ministry. The transfer of civil registration, address and passport affairs is of a different nature: this is administrative organisation, which also has a professional justification, since electronic public administration already belonged to the same ministry.

This difference shows why it is not enough to judge the decree in a single sentence. The same piece of legislation contains an element that raises the question of the concentration of power, and also one that follows a functional logic. Without a public map of competences, however, the public cannot separate these two types, and the debate inevitably narrows to the loudest element. This is the basis of MIAK’s proposal 3.1.

📖 Source: Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America

6.5 International comparison

Several European solutions exist for the parliamentary control of intelligence services, and they are the precursors of MIAK’s proposal 3.3. In Germany the members of the national security scrutiny body (Parlamentarisches Kontrollgremium) are elected by the Bundestag, the body may also inspect classified data, and a separate confidential committee decides on the budget of the services — that is, budgetary control is institutionally separated from the general budget debate, in exactly the way MIAK proposes. In Norway the committee supervising the services operates as a standing body independent of parliament, and publishes an annual public report on the scrutiny it has carried out, even while the details remain classified.

Keeping the committee chair in opposition hands is likewise not a Hungarian peculiarity: in the United Kingdom the chair of the Public Accounts Committee, which carries out scrutiny of public finances, is traditionally an opposition member, and what makes this practice workable is precisely that it has settled as a rule and not as a gesture. In its reports on the democratic control of national security services, the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission names the same two elements — an independent external scrutiny body and real budgetary access — as minimum requirements.

Public administration and e-government

  • KI7 — Official selection and rotation system
  • KI8 — Drucker-style efficiency measurement in public administration
  • KI11 — Organisational behaviour audit — the Allison framework

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A6 — Strengthening checks and balances
  • A9 — Spin-dictatorship prevention index
  • A3 — Publicity of asset declarations

Justice

  • I3 — Legislative impact assessment

Proposed new programme point: A public map of competences and a short impact assessment for every government decree rearranging portfolios — for the Public administration and e-government area.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 1 September 2026 — topic 3):

  • [Telex] Ruff Bálinthoz került a szuper-titkosszolgálat, amit korábban Rogán felügyelt — https://telex.hu/belfold/2026/09/01/tisza-kormany-ruff-balint-miniszterelnokseg-feladatkorok-magyar-kozlony
  • [HVG] A kormány alaposan átrendezte a miniszterek hatásköreit — https://hvg.hu/itthon/20260901_a-kormany-alaposan-atrendezte-a-miniszterek-hataskoreit
  • [24.hu] Véget ért Polt Péter rövid alkotmánybírósági pályafutása — https://24.hu/belfold/2026/09/01/polt-peter-tavozott-alkotmanybirosagg-lejart-mandatumok/
  • [Telex] Kármán András kinevezte a NAV új elnökét és bűnügyi elnökhelyettesét — https://telex.hu/gazdasag/2026/08/31/penzugyminiszterium-rozsane-sadt-monika-nav-elnok
  • [Portfolio] Rózsáné Sádt Mónika lesz a NAV új elnöke — https://www.portfolio.hu/gazdasag/20260831/rozsane-sadt-monika-lesz-a-nav-uj-elnoke-859484
  • [Mandiner] Kinevezték a NAV új elnökét és bűnügyi elnökhelyettesét — https://mandiner.hu/belfold/2026/08/kineveztek-a-nav-uj-elnoket-es-bunugyi-elnokhelyetteset
  • [Portfolio] Mészáros Renáta már nem helyettes államtitkár — https://www.portfolio.hu/gazdasag/20260831/meszaros-renata-mar-nem-helyettes-allamtitkar-859516
  • [HVG] Megnevezték a Vidék- és Településfejlesztési Minisztérium lemondott helyettes államtitkárát — https://hvg.hu/itthon/20260831_kozlony-allamtitkar-helyettes-tavozas-egyetemi-tanarok-kinevezesek
  • [ATV] Hirtelen lemondott egy helyettes államtitkár, kiderült miért — https://www.atv.hu/belfold/20260901/meszaros-renata-helyettes-allamtitkar/
  • [Mandiner] Három hét után távozhat egy tiszás helyettes államtitkár — https://mandiner.hu/belfold/2026/08/harom-het-utan-tavozhat-egy-tiszas-helyettes-allamtitkar-az-ellenzeki-politikus-szerint-fogy-a-levego-a-miniszter-korul
  • [Magyar Nemzet] Újabb Ruff Bálint-féle partizános miniszter ugorhat be Magyar Péter kormányába — https://magyarnemzet.hu/belfold/2026/08/ujabb-ruff-balint-fele-partizanos-miniszter-ugorhat-be-magyar-peter-kormanyaba

Knowledge base references (literature):

  • 📖 The Fundamental Law of Hungary
  • 📖 Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws
  • 📖 Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Public administration and e-government (programme points; programme point ID: KI7, KI8, KI11)
  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A6, A9, A3)
  • MIAK policy area: Justice (programme points; programme point ID: I3)
  • MIAK policy area: Public safety and law enforcement (background material)
  • MIAK press monitor, 1 September 2026 — topic 3, score: 92/100

Supplementary public data sources:

  • Magyar Közlöny — the text of the decree on competences
  • Parliament — agendas and minutes of the National Security Committee
  • Venice Commission — reports on the democratic control of national security services
  • European Commission — rule of law report, Hungarian chapter

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