Part I — Situation overview

On 28 August Parliament elected the president of the National Asset Recovery and Asset Protection Office, and on the same day the announcement was made of the amendment of the procedural laws linked to asset recovery. At the parliamentary press briefing the Prime Minister mentioned among the tasks the tightening of criminal procedure rules, the shortening of procedural deadlines and the strengthening of the courts and the investigating authorities, and indicated that the budgetary frame will also have to be raised, because proceedings often slip for want of experts. The text of the proposal is expected in the first weeks of the autumn session; its drafting can therefore still be timed ahead of submission. The political starting point is clear: according to the head of government it is wholly unacceptable that in important cases a final judgment should be delivered after five to ten years.

The factual claim is well founded. HVG’s compilation of 2 September lists several concrete cases to illustrate the slowness, and also recalls the dispute that broke out over a statement made by the office’s president at a committee hearing. The president called the promise of final judgments within the six-year cycle unfounded; she later clarified that by the end of the sixth year she undertakes the full mapping of the loss of assets and the securing of the public assets that can be traced. According to the criminal judges asked, speeding up requires an appropriate legislative frame, a functioning ministerial background, a solution to the staff shortage in adjudication in the capital, and substantial resources. The legal director of Transparency International Hungary gave the same emphasis on 6 September: in his view it is not necessarily the amendment of legislation that will resolve the situation, but whether the authorities have enough professionals, infrastructure and financial and logistical conditions for faster investigation. He also mentioned that in the central bank foundation case the investigation has been running for a year and a half, and that the authority has secured assets worth 91 billion forints.

MIAK’s reading falls between the two extreme positions, but not in the middle. Accountability is durable if it proceeds according to a procedural order fixed in advance — from which it follows that slow proceedings do indeed miss the objective, while fast proceedings without guarantees make the legal fate of the recovered assets precisely the thing that becomes uncertain. A hurried investigation produces a bad indictment, and a bad indictment produces an acquittal or the release of assets placed under seizure. The question is therefore not whether to speed things up, but at which procedural stage, with what counterweight and against what measurable target value the acceleration should take place.

Part II — Foundations in the literature

Three sources give the frame. The criminal procedure act in force, Act XC of 2017, itself proves that acceleration and guarantee are not opposites: at several points it allows the authority to act without prior authorisation in order to avoid delay, but makes subsequent approval compulsory. If that is not obtained, the data so acquired may not be used as evidence — the price of acceleration is therefore a clear, previously known sanction. In The Road to Serfdom Friedrich August von Hayek, the Austrian-British economist and legal philosopher, generalises the same point: the essence of the rule of law is that government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand, from which it can be foreseen with reasonable certainty how the authority will use its coercive power. And John Austin, the founding figure of nineteenth-century English legal positivism, in his posthumous Lectures on Jurisprudence provides the distinction without which this debate becomes confused: the validity of a legal rule is a procedural question, not a question of substantive approval — that is, a rule does not become a good rule merely because its objective is right, and vice versa. The detailed treatment of the literature — source by source, with quotations — can be found in section 6.4 Literature in detail.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures, all three before the bill is submitted.

3.1 Guarantee pairing: a counterweight beside every accelerating element (as an annex to the submitted text)

MIAK proposes that the submitted bill be accompanied by an itemised pairing table showing, row by row: which provision shortens a deadline or simplifies a procedural step, and which provision is the counterweight assigned to it. The model does not come from abroad but from the act in force: the criminal procedure act already knows the structure in which the authority may begin a procedural act without prior authorisation in order to avoid delay, but is obliged to obtain subsequent authorisation within a fixed number of hours. If it does not obtain it, the data so acquired may not be used as evidence and must indeed be deleted (see 6.4.1). The pairing requirement generalises this logic: if the proposal shortens, say, the deadline for the disclosure of documents or for making motions, then which rule of remedy or of evidence will be the one that maintains equality of arms for the defence. The table does not slow down legislation — the legislator thinks these questions through in any case; the novelty is that it does so in writing and in public. The proposal builds on programme points I3 (legislative impact assessment) and A6 (checks and balances).

3.2 A data-based bottleneck analysis before submission (within 60 days)

The debate on speeding up is being conducted today on anecdotes: everyone mentions a single case as an example. MIAK proposes that before the bill is submitted a public analysis be prepared of how much time each stage actually takes in proceedings for corruption and economic crimes — from the criminal complaint to the notification of suspicion, from the notification of suspicion to the sending of the files to the prosecution service, from there to the indictment, and then from the indictment to the first-instance and to the final judgment. The analysis should show, in a breakdown, how much of the delay is a statutory deadline, how much is a lack of capacity (numbers of investigators, expert capacity, judicial staffing) and how much is the exercise of the defence’s procedural rights. This breakdown will decide whether legislative amendment is the right instrument at all: if most of the delay stems from a shortage of experts, then shortening deadlines does not speed anything up, it merely raises the probability of error. Under MIAK’s programme point I3 this analysis would in any case be a compulsory annex to the proposal; in the present matter it is particularly important because the professional actors — judges and civil society experts alike — named precisely capacity and not the rules as the bottleneck.

3.3 Excluding retroactive effect and public procedural statistics (from entry into force)

MIAK proposes that the amendment contain an express provision that the tightening, or any element narrowing an entitlement, need not be applied in proceedings already under way at the time of entry into force. Maintaining the prohibition is warranted — indeed, it is most important — even where the objective is otherwise commendable: what gives accountability its credit is precisely that its rules will still stand in the next cycle. In addition, the act should prescribe that the investigating authority and the prosecution service publish procedural statistics annually, at case-group level and without individual case data: the number of cases, the average and median duration by stage, the proportion of suspensions and terminations, and the value of assets placed under seizure and actually confiscated. Without this the success of the amendment cannot be determined even after the fact. The proposal carries the data publicity logic of A1 (public funds dashboard) over to the procedural side, and is consistent with the guarantees of I5 (protection of property rights).

The three proposals are bound together by the same thing: all three aim at the durability of the rule, not at its tempo. In Hayek’s formulation (see 6.4.2) the yardstick of the rule of law is that the use of the authority’s coercive power should be foreseeable — and this yardstick is not loosened by the fact that the coercion is now being applied against people against whom, in the view of the majority of public opinion, it is warranted.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Justice The bottleneck analysis shows where time is actually lost; guarantee pairing records in writing what the counterweight is Shortening deadlines without expanding capacity does not speed anything up, it merely raises the error rate and the number of judgments set aside
Asset recovery Publishing procedural statistics makes it measurable how much of the assets placed under seizure actually become confiscated assets If the proceedings collapse through a legal error, the release of the seizure may mean the assets are lost for good — the price of acceleration may be the failure of accountability
Legal certainty The express exclusion of retroactive effect sets a precedent: accountability legislation holds to the same yardstick it expects of others The political pressure for quick results is strong; presenting guarantees as “delay” is an easy and effective argument
Public trust Public, case-group-level statistics also make expectations more realistic The dispute about the six-year horizon shows that communicating a realistic timetable is in itself a political risk — which is why data are needed, not promises

The main question for consideration does not run between speed and justice, but between two types of failure. One failure is that the proceedings drag on and, because of limitation or the deterioration of evidence, there is no judgment. The other is that the proceedings collapse because of a formal error — in that case there is not only no judgment, but the authority’s credit is damaged as well, and the initiative hands arguments to the opponents of accountability. The proposal tips towards the risk side if the shortening of deadlines is directed at the investigative stage while expert and investigative capacity remains unchanged. It works if the acceleration primarily affects the organisational and capacity side — more financial investigators, available forensic experts, procedural acts run in parallel — and legislation shortens only those stages where the analysis genuinely showed unjustified dead time.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth following? (suggested KPIs)

MIAK proposes four performance indicators (KPIs, Key Performance Indicators) from which it will be visible in 12 and 24 months whether the amendment achieved its objective:

  • The appearance of the analysis and the impact assessment before submission: yes or no — this is the only indicator that can be assessed on the day of the vote itself.
  • Procedural duration by stage: the median time elapsed from the notification of suspicion to the sending of the files to the prosecution service, and from the indictment to the first-instance judgment, in the economic and corruption case group. Suggested target: a reduction of at least 20 per cent in the median value within 24 months.
  • The proportion of terminations and set-aside judgments arising from legal error: this indicator measures the price of acceleration. Suggested target: it should not be higher than the present level — if it rises, the amendment went in the wrong direction.
  • The ratio of assets placed under seizure to assets actually confiscated: the final result of asset recovery is not the sum secured but what passes to the state by final judgment. Suggested target: the ratio should be publicly trackable annually, with a target value from the third year.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s request to the legislator is concrete: before submitting the bill, publish the bottleneck analysis, attach the guarantee pairing table, and expressly exclude retroactive effect. The message to the public is just as simple: the six years are neither a promise nor an alibi, but a timetable of which a version underpinned by data either exists or does not — and it is that version MIAK is calling for, not the mood.

Two MIAK foundational values move in this matter. Accountability, because asset recovery is the hardest test of accountability: this is where it becomes clear whether the state is capable of acting according to its own rules even when public opinion is impatient. And freedom from ideology, because the value of procedural guarantees does not depend on who stands on the other side. MIAK’s yardstick remains the same as before: an instrument of accountability has to be drafted so that its author could bear it if it were one day applied to them.

Part VI — Reasoning and further sources

6.1 The framing of the press by spectrum

In the left-liberal band HVG took the analysis furthest: the compilation of 2 September did not dispute the government’s intention but its enforceability, and for this it called on the internal viewpoint of the judiciary. The article’s framing is that of capacity — the judges quoted mentioned, alongside the legislative frame, the ministerial background work, the staff shortage in adjudication in the capital, and the need for resources. This frame matters because it stands opposed to the assumption prevailing in public discourse that slowness is primarily a regulatory question. HVG’s piece of 6 September dealing with the legal director of Transparency International Hungary reinforced the same emphasis, from another source.

Telex’s framing, reporting on the press briefing of 28 August, confined itself to an accurate rendering of the government’s reasoning, and the report also made room for fact-checking: the paper indicated that one of the head of government’s arguments — the foreign example adduced on the absence of a legal qualification — does not stand up. From MIAK’s point of view this editorial decision is of methodological value, regardless of whom it concerns.

In the public affairs band ATV conveyed the civil society expert position, placing the emphasis on the magnitudes. The economic and the conservative bands did not bring the question of speeding up proceedings into separate focus on that day; at this stage the topic ran typically in a legal-professional rather than an economic policy frame. The demarcation matters: the debate on speeding up proceedings does not coincide with the political dispute about setting up the office, and MIAK deliberately treats the two separately.

6.2 Facts and data

Indicator Value Source
Election of the president of the asset recovery office 28 August 2026 Telex, HVG, 28 August 2026
Direction of the announced amendment tightening of criminal procedure rules, shortening of procedural deadlines, strengthening of the courts and investigating authorities Telex, 28 August 2026; HVG, 2 September 2026
Assets placed under seizure in the central bank foundation case 91 billion forints, the investigation has been running for a year and a half HVG, 6 September 2026 (statement by the legal director of Transparency International Hungary)
Deadline for the detection stage no statutory deadline, limitation is the constraint; where there is a suspect, in the case of a more serious offence as much as three years may elapse before the files are sent to the prosecution service HVG, 2 September 2026
Deadline for the prosecutor’s decision on indictment 30–90 days from the arrival of the files HVG, 2 September 2026
Status of the bill the text had not been submitted by the time this analysis was closed MIAK topic monitor, 6 September 2026

None of the data in the table comes from a government compilation but from press sources; this is precisely one of the practical grounds for proposal 3.2. There are today no public, case-group-level, regular statistics on procedural durations, and so the debate on speeding up is necessarily confined to listing individual cases.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — the institutional conditions of accountability and data publicity: A1 (public funds dashboard) provides the model for the procedural statistics, and A6 (checks and balances) the basis of principle for guarantee pairing;
  • Justice (programme points) — the quality of legislation and the protection of property: I3 (legislative impact assessment) makes the pre-submission analysis compulsory, and I5 (protection of property rights) marks out the circle of guarantees that acceleration may not breach;
  • Public administration and e-government (background material) — administrative capacity and expert support as the condition of enforceability;
  • Economy (programme points) — action against rent-seeking: under programme point G6 the dismantling of privileged market positions is the economic objective of accountability, measured by the outcome of the proceedings, not by their initiation.

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Parliament of Hungary: Act XC of 2017 on Criminal Procedure

For the purposes of the present debate the criminal procedure act in force matters above all because it carries within it the very pattern that MIAK recommends as the yardstick for the amendment. At several points the act expressly permits the authority to act without obtaining prior authorisation in order to avoid delay — for example in applying covert instruments or in ordering a search. To the acceleration, however, it assigns a counterweight in every case: subsequent authorisation must be obtained, compulsorily, within a fixed deadline. If the authorisation is not forthcoming or the motion is rejected, the data so obtained may not be used as evidence and must indeed be deleted without delay. The same structure appears on the side of timeliness as well: the act recognises an objection on grounds of the protraction of proceedings as a separate remedy, decided by the prosecution service, and obliges defence counsel to exercise their rights in such a way as not to obstruct the timely conduct of the proceedings. The law in force therefore does not speak in favour of slowness: it contains instruments in both directions. The value of the amendment will accordingly be decided by whether it preserves this two-way structure, or shifts in one direction only.

📖 Source: Parliament of Hungary: Act XC of 2017 on Criminal Procedure

6.4.2 Friedrich A. Hayek: The Road to Serfdom

Hayek describes the rule of law not as an abstract ideal but as an operating condition, and he gives his definition stripped of every technical layer:

“Nothing distinguishes more clearly the conditions in a free country from those in a country under arbitrary government than the observance in the former of the great principles known as the rule of law. Stripped of all technicalities, this means that government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand — rules which make it possible to foresee with fair certainty how the authority will use its coercive powers in given circumstances.”

Hayek adds that the ideal can never be perfectly attained, because legislator and law-applier alike may err — the point is that the discretionary scope of the executive bodies wielding coercive power should be as narrow as possible. In speeding up asset recovery proceedings this is precisely the stake. Technically, acceleration can be achieved in two ways: either by expanding organisational capacity, or by widening the authority’s scope of discretion. The first is neutral in Hayek’s sense, while the second reduces exactly the predictability that is the core of the rule of law. MIAK’s guarantee pairing proposal makes this difference visible before the vote.

📖 Source: Friedrich A. Hayek: The Road to Serfdom

6.4.3 John Austin: Lectures on Jurisprudence

The central proposition of Austin’s legal positivism — law as the command of the sovereign, accompanied by a sanction — yields a very practical distinction in today’s debate. In Austin’s view the validity of a legal rule turns on its procedural validity by reference to its source, not on its moral content; “bad law” does not cease to be law, it merely becomes open to criticism. Two things follow from this for the asset recovery amendment. On the one hand: the fact that the objective is commendable — recovering stolen public assets — does not automatically make the rule a good rule; its quality has to be measured separately, against a procedural yardstick. On the other hand, it is also true that a norm enacted in formally correct fashion but narrowing guarantees remains law, and will be applicable to everyone — including those against whom the legislator did not originally intend it. Austin’s separation thesis is for that very reason the best argument for MIAK’s proposal 3.3: excluding retroactive effect is not an argument against the objective, but the recognition that the rule written now will outlive the case that prompted its writing.

📖 Source: John Austin: Lectures on Jurisprudence

6.5 International comparison

The EU legal frame also marks out the room for manoeuvre of the Hungarian proposal. The 2024 EU directive on asset recovery and confiscation asks member states at once for effectiveness — the setting up of asset tracing offices, the acceleration of seizure, asset management to preserve the value of seized property — and for guarantees: the right to a remedy, the protection of the legal position of affected third parties, and the requirement of proportionality. The two sides are not alternatives but two halves of the same regulation. The experience of the preventive confiscation system operating in Italy for decades supports this too: the effectiveness of the instrument was founded not on narrowing judicial control but on specialised prosecutorial and asset management capacity and on the transparent reuse of confiscated assets. The lesson of the Romanian integrity system, by contrast, is the same from the opposite direction: fast and spectacular proceedings became unsustainable at the point where the guarantees of remedy and of evidence failed to keep pace with them. Both cases point in the direction of MIAK’s proposal 3.1.

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A1 — Public funds dashboard
  • A6 — Strengthening checks and balances

Justice

  • I3 — Legislative impact assessment
  • I5 — Protection of property rights

Economy

  • G6 — Programme against rent-seeking and regulatory capture

Suggested new programme point: A guarantee pairing annex for every legislative amendment that speeds up proceedings — for the Justice policy area.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK topic monitor, 6 September 2026 — topic 1; the press material is from the monitors of 28 August and of early September 2026):

Knowledge base references (specialist books and sources of law):

  • 📖 Parliament of Hungary: Act XC of 2017 on Criminal Procedure
  • 📖 Friedrich A. Hayek: The Road to Serfdom
  • 📖 John Austin: Lectures on Jurisprudence

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A1, A6)
  • MIAK policy area: Justice (programme points; programme point ID: I3, I5)
  • MIAK policy area: Economy (programme points; programme point ID: G6)
  • MIAK topic monitor, 6 September 2026 — topic 1, score: 95/100

Supplementary public data sources:

  • Directive (EU) 2024/1260 of the European Parliament and of the Council on asset recovery and confiscation

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