Part I — Situation overview

The Committee of Inquiry to Uncover Those Responsible for the Clemency Scandal held its inaugural sitting on 2 September 2026. The body is chaired by Orsolya Schummer, deputy leader of the Tisza parliamentary group, its vice-chairs are Róbert Zsigó (Fidesz) and Előd Novák (Mi Hazánk), and its further members are Zsuzsanna Máthé (KDNP) and Mihály Borics and Kinga Karázdi-Kerekes (Tisza). At the sitting the rules of procedure and the work plan were adopted, and the range of documents to be requested was determined in advance: the internal materials of the Sándor Palace and the justice ministry, the full file of the clemency case, the submissions for the decorations awarded to the head of the Bicske children’s home, and investigative materials. According to the chair’s estimate, the hearings may start within a few weeks, after the review of the documentary material. The chair of the committee will personally propose the hearing of former President of the Republic Katalin Novák, former Justice Minister Judit Varga and Zoltán Balog. Under the new rules voted through by Tisza, the body may place those summoned under an obligation to tell the truth. In the event of absence it may impose a fine of one hundred thousand forints on the first occasion and one million forints on the second, and on a third failure to appear it may initiate a police escort. The committee’s mandate runs to the end of the year, but can be extended.

The background is known, but its essence is not the scandal but the legal institution. In 2023 Katalin Novák granted clemency to a former deputy director of the Bicske children’s home, who had previously been convicted for attempting to induce a resident to withdraw their testimony against the director who was sexually abusing the children. From the documents made public by the Sándor Palace in May 2026 it emerged that the organisational unit responsible for clemency cases expressly did not recommend clemency, and that the justice minister who countersigned the decision did not support it either. Zoltán Balog acknowledged that he had interceded with the head of state at the request of the convicted person’s wife, but denied that he had done so on government instruction. The reason for the clemency cannot officially be established to this day — and this is not an administrative omission but follows from the present structure of the power. Under point g) of Article 9(4) of the Fundamental Law the President of the Republic exercises the right of individual clemency, and under paragraph (5) the countersignature of a member of the Government is required for this — but neither provision prescribes a duty to give reasons, notification of the victim, subsequent publicity or judicial review.

MIAK’s reading: Hungarian public law shows a classic structural fault here. Alongside a single-person decision-making power of great weight there is neither prior procedural discipline nor subsequent verifiability — the only counterweight of power is the ministerial countersignature, which, however, demonstrably did not work as a brake in 2023. The same structural question arises on the committee’s side too: the coercive instruments — the fine, the police escort and the obligation to tell the truth — are genuine instruments of power, which call for procedural guarantees. The answer to one missing guarantee cannot be another missing guarantee.

Part II — Foundations in the literature

The interpretive frame is given by three sources. The first is the constitutional text in force itself: the Fundamental Law assigns individual clemency to the powers of the President of the Republic and prescribes a countersignature requirement, but no procedural rule — the power therefore formally exists, but is unstructured in substance. The second is The Spirit of the Laws by Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (eighteenth-century French legal and political thinker, the first systematic expositor of the separation of powers), which describes the power of clemency as an instrument of governmental moderation, but expressly ties it to the condition of prudent exercise — for him the question is not the existence of clemency but its measure and its reason. The third is Corruption and Government by Susan Rose-Ackerman (American lawyer-economist, professor at Yale University, one of the founding authors of corruption research), according to which discretion must not only be limited but also managed: without clear, simple and enforceable procedural rules, discretion is in itself a source of risk, regardless of whether the given decision was correct. The three sources together say the same thing: abolishing the power of clemency is not warranted, but structuring it is. The detailed treatment of the literature — author by author, with quotations — can be found in section 6.4 Literature in detail.

📖 Source: National Assembly: Fundamental Law of Hungary; Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws; Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures. The starting point is that the constitutional institution of individual clemency is valuable: there are life situations in which the judicial decision is formally correct but its result is inequitable, and in such cases a final instrument of correction is needed. The question is not the existence of the instrument, but whether its path can be traced afterwards.

3.1 Raising a clemency procedure protocol to statutory level (simultaneously with the submission of the committee’s report)

The National Assembly should adopt a statutory procedural order prescribing four compulsory elements for the preparation of individual clemency. One: in every clemency case a written, registered submission should be prepared recording the identity of the applicant, the reason for the application and the professional position. Two: a short, written statement of reasons should accompany the decision — this does not impair the head of state’s freedom of judgement, it only makes the subject matter of that judgement visible. Three: the victim of the criminal offence should have to be informed before the decision, and should be given the opportunity to make a statement. Four: the full documentary material of the preparation of the decision should be subject to compulsory archival retention with a fixed time limit. The proposal can be implemented without amending the text of the Fundamental Law, because it regulates not the extent of the power but the order of the procedure. MIAK’s relevant programme point is the strengthening of checks and balances, A6, which aims at making institutional operation measurable. Rose-Ackerman’s requirement (see 6.4.3) is directly applicable here: discretion is not to be abolished but managed.

3.2 An annual, anonymised clemency report (for the first time on the year 2026, in the first quarter of 2027)

The office of the President of the Republic and the ministry responsible for preparation should publish an annual summary of the individual clemency applications submitted and adjudicated. The report should contain no data suitable for personal identification, but should present the number of cases, the distribution of applications by type, the rejection rate, the frequency of divergence between the professional submission and the final decision, and the average time taken to decide. This range of data makes no one identifiable in itself, but it makes the pattern visible: the extent to which the regular exercise of the power follows the professional preparation. MIAK’s programme point A1 applies this same principle to public money data — regular, machine-readable publication is the cheapest instrument of accountability. Annual regularity matters because the data of a single case tell nothing, whereas a time series does.

3.3 A minimum procedural package for the committee’s hearings (before the first hearing)

The committee should record four guarantees in its own rules of procedure. One: the person summoned should receive, together with the summons, the subject matter of the hearing and a list of the documents concerned, with a reasonable time to prepare. Two: the presence of a legal representative at the hearing should be assured. Three: the choice between an open and a closed sitting should in every case be a reasoned, written committee decision, not a routine of chairing. Four: the committee should state expressly in its report that its findings do not establish criminal liability — investigation and the bringing of charges are exclusively within the competence of the prosecution service and the investigating authority, while the committee, as an organ of the National Assembly, uncovers political and institutional responsibility. MIAK’s programme point I10, the constitutional stress test, was made precisely for the examination of such new instruments of power: with every new coercive entitlement one has to ask whether the system would bear it in the hands of the next parliamentary majority.

The three measures are linked by a single principle. A decision is legitimate if its path can be reconstructed afterwards — even if someone disagrees with its content. The 2023 clemency became a case that remains unresolvable to this day because its path cannot be reconstructed: there is no statement of reasons that could be contested. If the committee now works with coercive instruments, but its own procedure is likewise not reconstructible, then the end result will be the same vacuum of trust, only with the opposite sign. Montesquieu’s argument (see 6.4.2) is precisely this: a moderating power strengthens government if it is predictable, and weakens it if it is unpredictable.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Public law Individual clemency remains a final instrument of correction, but its exercise becomes traceable The duty to give reasons may become formal: template texts that comply with the letter but say nothing in substance
Child protection Building in notification of the victim forestalls secondary victimisation in the gravest cases Poor implementation of the duty to inform may itself be traumatising — the implementing rules have to be written with the professional involvement of victim support
Parliamentary control The committee of inquiry’s instruments are strong, the real chance of uncovering the truth grows Without guarantees the body may become a political instrument, and its findings thereby lose their credibility — the report becomes refutable
Data protection The anonymised annual report shows the pattern, not the individual case With case types of small numbers the anonymisation may be reversible — categories below a threshold value have to be published in aggregated form

The main question to be weighed is the extent of publicity. The documentary material of an individual clemency case is among the most sensitive data: criminal record, state of health, family circumstances. If publicity is too wide, the submission of a clemency application itself becomes a punishment, and the legal institution is hollowed out. If, on the other hand, it is too narrow — this is the state today — then even a single case undermines trust in the system as a whole. MIAK’s proposal therefore strengthens procedural publicity at the level of the individual case (written form, statement of reasons, retention of documents), and statistical publicity at the aggregate level — there is no need to choose between the two. The proposal tips over to the risk side if the duty to give reasons is hollowed out into a template: this can be prevented only if divergence from the professional submission has to be explained expressly.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth following? (proposed KPIs)

MIAK proposes the following performance indicators (KPIs — Key Performance Indicators). These are proposed indicators, not governmental undertakings.

  • Proportion of reasoned decisions: for what percentage of individual clemency decisions a written statement of reasons is prepared. The initial target is 100 per cent — below that the protocol does not work, it merely exists.
  • Rate of divergence from the professional submission: in how many cases the final decision diverges from the position of the organisational unit conducting the clemency preparation, and in how many of these there is a separate explanation. This is the only indicator that measures the structural cause of the 2023 case.
  • Coverage of victim notification: the proportion of cases in which there is an identifiable victim and they were informed before the decision.
  • Transparency of the committee procedure: the proportion of closed sittings relative to all hearings, and in how many of these a written statement of reasons for the closure was prepared.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s request in a single sentence: the committee of inquiry should not only uncover the path of the 2023 decision, but should submit, together with its report, a bill on the order of the clemency procedure — because establishing responsibility is a one-off event, whereas a procedural rule affects every future case. The same yardstick applies to the committee’s own instruments: prior communication of the subject matter of the summons, the presence of counsel and a reasoned decision on closure do not slow down the uncovering of the truth, but protect its result from being dismissed as a political procedure.

Of MIAK’s foundational values two are in play here. Accountability is what warrants the inquiry: a decision about which it is still not known on what basis it was taken remains an open wound in the legal order. Openness, on the other hand, is the yardstick of implementation: accountability is credible if its instruments are as transparent as the transparency we expect from the decision under examination. The two values do not pull against each other here, but are two sides of the same requirement — that the path of the exercise of power be traceable afterwards.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 The framing of the press, spectrum by spectrum

The liberal-left and public affairs band concentrated on the procedure and on the historical background. 444.hu’s report is the most detailed reconstruction: it sets out the phasing of the committee’s work plan and gives context going back to 2011 — the 2012 ombudsman’s report, the notification made to the capital’s authorities and the investigation closed in 2012 — that is, its framing is a chain of institutional omissions, not individual responsibility. HVG carries the same strand, but places the emphasis on the committee chair’s coercive entitlements, and quotes the chair’s own delimitation: the committee is not the same as an investigating authority. ATV placed the fact of the open broadcast at the head of its framing, without substantive evaluation.

The conservative band selected a different element from the same material. Magyar Nemzet’s headline puts the possibility of coercive measures first, and the article emphasises that the committee chair did not answer numerous questions, referring to the review of the documentary material — the framing therefore calls the body’s preparedness into question. Mandiner is by comparison more restrained and fact-reporting: it reproduces the elements of the chair’s press conference, including the exact amounts of the fines, which are missing from the other papers. The substantive contribution of the conservative band to the debate is the raising of the proportionality question — how far it is warranted to hold out the prospect of a strong set of coercive instruments at an early stage of preparation.

A separate category is the opinion column: 24.hu published a piece by the philosopher Anna Réz which is not about the committee but about the institution of clemency, and which poses the furthest-reaching question — whether there is any place at all for an institutionalised practice of clemency. This is the only text in the field that thinks at the level of the legal institution; MIAK’s analysis stands close to this viewpoint, but with a different conclusion: not towards abolition, but towards structuring.

6.2 Facts and data

Item Regulation in force What it prescribes, and what it does not
Basis of the power Fundamental Law, Article 9(4)(g) the President of the Republic exercises the right of individual clemency
Countersignature Fundamental Law, Article 9(5) the countersignature of a member of the Government is required
Duty to give reasons — not prescribed
Notification of the victim — not prescribed
Subsequent publicity — not prescribed
Judicial review — none; the act is not an administrative decision
General amnesty within the competence of the National Assembly, and cannot be the subject of a national referendum a power different from individual clemency, exercised in statutory form

The most important row of the table is the empty column. Hungarian regulation does not order the clemency procedure badly — it does not order it at all. The practical procedural order (submission, professional opinion, countersignature) exists at the level of internal rules of procedure, but is not a statutory obligation, and therefore failure to comply with it has no legal consequence either. It was this difference that made it possible in 2023 for a decision to be taken against the professional position without anyone having to give an explanation for it.

A further fact that got lost in the debate: after the 2024 scandal the Fundamental Law was amended, and those convicted of criminal offences committed against children can no longer receive clemency. This is a genuine tightening, but it excludes only a single type of case — it does not change the structure of the procedure, so in every other group of cases the same situation obtains as in 2023.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Administration of justice (programme points) — the procedural structuring of the power of clemency and the constitutional examination of the new parliamentary coercive instruments (programme point ID: I10), and the legislative feedback that turns the committee’s report into a bill (programme point ID: I9);
  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — making checks and balances measurable, and within this the verifiability of single-person discretionary powers (programme point ID: A6), and the principle of regular, machine-readable publication (programme point ID: A1);
  • Public administration and e-government (background material) — the record-management and retention obligation without which subsequent reconstruction is physically impossible.

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 National Assembly: Fundamental Law of Hungary

Article 9 of the Fundamental Law lists the powers of the President of the Republic. Under point g) of paragraph (4) the head of state “shall exercise the right of individual clemency”, while paragraph (5) states that “the countersignature of a member of the Government shall be required for all measures and decisions” specified in paragraph (4). The structure of the text is instructive: the constituent power carefully determined who exercises the power and who has to countersign, but says not a single word about how. Paragraph (6) expressly lists the cases in which the President may refuse compliance — the accreditation of ambassadors, ministerial appointments and a few further points — but clemency does not appear in this list, because there the matter is not one of refusing countersignature but of an original discretionary power.

From the point of view of the 2023 case it follows from this that the decision was formally faultless: the President exercised her power, the minister countersigned. The problem is not a breach of the constitution but a constitutional gap — the space the text left open, and which a statutory procedural order ought to fill. This is why MIAK asserts that the solution is not the amendment of the Fundamental Law but the enactment of a procedural act.

📖 Source: National Assembly: Fundamental Law of Hungary

6.4.2 Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws

Montesquieu describes the power of clemency not as a fault but as a characteristic and useful instrument of monarchical government, yet he expressly ties its usefulness to the manner of its exercise. He regards the possibility of pardon as valuable in moderate governments, and considers prudence to be the decisive quality:

“Letters of grace are of excellent use in moderate governments. This power which the prince has of pardoning, exercised with prudence, is capable of producing admirable effects.”

To this he immediately adds the other side too: there is a measure of the exercise of clemency that is no longer mercy but weakness — and the distinction between the two is made not by a rule that can be prescribed but by weighing the situation. Montesquieu thus describes precisely the problem that today’s Hungarian regulation faces: the value of clemency lies in the exercise of judgement, and its risk in the same. In his age the answer to this was the personal wisdom of the prince; in a constitutional democracy the answer can only be procedural. Read in this frame, the Hungarian case is not an argument against the institution of clemency, but an argument for the subject matter of the judgement having to be put in writing — because only of a judgement recorded in writing can it be established afterwards whether it was prudent.

📖 Source: Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws

6.4.3 Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government

Rose-Ackerman’s central proposition is that discretion is not in itself a problem, but that left unmanaged it is a systemic risk. The judgement of a public official becomes a problem if the person concerned has no legal remedy, and if the procedure has no enforceable order. In the chapter on the design of regulatory institutions the volume records this requirement in a single sentence:

“Discretion must be both limited and managed. New regulatory agencies need relatively clear, simple, and enforceable guidelines.”

The argument has two steps. First: limitation alone is not enough, because discretion is unavoidable in most public power decisions — it has to be managed, not eliminated. Second: the instrument of management is not a subsequent sanction but a procedural framework fixed in advance, simple and open to being called to account. The clemency case shows precisely the absence of these two steps: the extent of the power is limited by the Fundamental Law (individual clemency, with countersignature), while nothing manages the order of its exercise. According to Rose-Ackerman, in such a structure the question is not whether a bad decision will be taken, but when — and whether, when it is taken, the system has an instrument for recognising it. In the Hungarian case the matter came to light months after the decision, through the publicity of the press; that is itself the answer.

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

6.5 International comparison

The procedural structuring of the power of clemency is not a Hungarian peculiarity but a question solved in several legal systems. In the federal system of the United States a separate office responsible for clemency matters operates within the justice department, which prepares a recommendation for the President on the basis of detailed, public procedural rules; the recommendation does not bind the President, but the steps of the procedure and the statistics of the applications submitted are public. In Canada the body responsible for parole acts in applications for the deletion of criminal records, on the basis of a published set of criteria, and refusals have to be reasoned. In the United Kingdom the exercise of the royal prerogative of mercy is prepared by the responsible minister, and the decision — unlike in the Hungarian situation — can be brought under judicial review within the narrow ambit of whether the procedure was lawful.

The common feature of the model is not the limitation of the power but the making visible of the procedure: in all three systems the presidential or governmental judgement is preserved, but there is a preparatory body, there is a published set of criteria, and there is some form of subsequent accountability. MIAK’s proposal fits into this family, and chooses the least intrusive variant: it does not limit the power, does not introduce judicial review, and asks only for written form, a statement of reasons, notification of the victim and annual statistical publication.

Administration of justice

  • I9 — Popular-sovereignty audit: legislation with citizen feedback
  • I10 — Constitutional ‘stress test’

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A1 — Public money dashboard
  • A3 — Publicity of asset declarations
  • A6 — Strengthening checks and balances

Proposed new programme point: A clemency procedure protocol — for the Administration of justice area: a statutory procedural order for the preparation of individual clemency (compulsory written submission, statement of reasons, notification of the victim, retention of documents) and annual, anonymised publication.

6.7 List of sources

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

Knowledge base references (specialist books):

  • 📖 National Assembly: Fundamental Law of Hungary
  • 📖 Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws
  • 📖 Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government — Causes, Consequences, and Reform

Note: the local file path of the books does not appear in the visible text of the blog — only the author and the title. The file path is an internal matter of the generation process, not the reader’s.

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Administration of justice (programme points; programme point ID: I9, I10)
  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A1, A3, A6)
  • MIAK policy area: Public administration and e-government (background material)
  • MIAK press monitor, 3 September 2026 — topic 1, score: 92/100

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