Index – National – Divided Candidate for Chief Justice – Parliament will vote next week

With the appointment of the Constitutional Judge András Varga Zs. As President of the Curia on October 5, President János Áder decided that the Chief Judge would not be called Péter Darák as of January 1. In principle, the President of the Curia could be re-elected for nine years, but the President of the Republic did not take advantage of this opportunity.

Nine hundred trials

András Zs. Varga accepted the nomination. The opposition politicians and judges also make the main objection to him that he was not a sentencing judge for a day. The candidate himself responded to this in a hearing before the Judicial Committee of Parliament on October 9, explaining that the Constitutional Court also acts as an appeal forum, that is, it acts as a judge, and has participated in more than a thousand cases in court. constitutional laws in the last six years. it was a complaint against a judicial sentence.

On October 12, the argument of Zs. Varga was confirmed by Balázs Orbán, Secretary of State in the Prime Minister’s Office, in response to an immediate question from Csaba Gyüre.

and if elected, a constitutional judge may be in charge of the Mansion and a constitutional judge will act as judge. Meanwhile: Balázs Orbán expressed his condolences a thousand years ago in a conversation published in Mandiner.

In addition to the candidate for head of state, Orbán’s boss, Gergely Gulyás, head of the Prime Minister’s Office, also spoke in full swing, saying in the October 8 government briefing that jurisprudence was not a requirement but a advantage for the president of the Curia. This occurred in the case of Zs. Varga, he pointed out, since the Constitutional Court also deals with constitutional complaints in accordance with the Basic Law, which is why it also carried out judicial activity. Added:

A small contradiction is that in 2011 the then president of the Supreme Court, András Baka, was removed from his post before the end of his term, because, according to Tibor Navracsics, Minister of Public Administration and Justice

“It does not meet the criteria established in the new legal regulation, which requires five years of judicial practice in Hungary.”

Outsiders on high shelf

Whether we add the constitutional court period to the trial years or not, there has been a precedent in the last three decades for an outsider to hit the high shelves and stand his ground. In 1990, for example, Kálmán Györgyi, the prominent criminal lawyer, was elected Chief Prosecutor, who had not been a prosecutor the day before. He later jokingly commented that he thought his former teacher, Miklós Kádár, would have commented on his request as follows:

“Dear Kálmán! A person more unsuitable than you may have been found for this position. “

Then, to the satisfaction of many, Kálmán Györgyi led the prosecution for ten years, moving the body to a democracy governed by the rule of law.

Or: the first president of the Constitutional Court, László Sólyom, also assumed the presidency of the panel in such a way that he had practically no managerial experience, was a kind of room scientist, and until his election he dealt exclusively with civil law. By comparison, the 1990s can also be boldly called the era of the Falcon Court, with numerous trials still decisive. The namesake was also President of the Republic after the Constitutional Court, since 2005 for five years.

Constitutional judges of the judiciary

Regarding the nomination of Zs. Varga, the National Council of the Judiciary (OBT) also denounced that

“His candidacy was made possible by two recent amendments to the law, which do not meet the constitutional requirement that a person who appears impartial to an independent outside observer from other branches of power must be at the top of the judicial system.”

Thus, the OBT meant that an amendment to the law passed in late 2019 allowed a constitutional judge to “appoint you as a judge for an indefinite period of time without examining the terms of the appointment and announcing an application” if a constitutional judge does so. requests. According to the law, the judicial status of the person concerned is suspended during his membership of the Constitutional Court, but he can be transferred to the Mansion immediately after the expiration of his term, that is, as president of the council.

With his resolutions published in the summer, Head of State János Áder appointed a total of eight constitutional judges as judges under the new regulations. Thus, as of July 1, Ágnes Czine, Imre Juhász, Ildikó Hörcherné Marosi, Balázs Schanda, Tamás Sulyok, Marcel Szabó, Péter Szalay and András Zs. Varga also became “sleeping judges” of the Curia. Eight “only” because they have not yet reached the general retirement age, which otherwise does not apply to constitutional judges.

In his Facebook post, András Schiffer, former co-chair of the LMP, said:

“If someone is a little aware of the facts, they know that it is not in practice that the seat of 8-10 current constitutional judges in a pulpit in 6-8-10 years is a threat to judicial independence. Orbán again managed to catch his opponents. The whole maneuver was a cover story to convert András Zs. Varga as president of the curia. How much more elegant it is to modify the law by the public body of 15 people than because it is only for one person ”.

“The president has no mansion”

Since the appointment of Zs. Varga, has been able to express his position before two plenary sessions. At the hearing of the Judiciary Commission of the National Assembly, he stressed that it is “infinitely important” as president of the Curia to separate professional and administrative tasks, whether we demonstrate in a gown or without a gown. As he said, the President of the Curia performs an administrative function and cannot influence the adjudication, and as adjudicating judge his position is one of the positions of the other judges involved in decision-making.

The candidate had three additional points at the committee meeting:

• The president of the Curia has very little influence on each of the sentences, and that is correct.
• It is not the president who has the Curia, but the president of the Curia.
• He had and probably will continue to have a personal opinion on various matters of public law, but must take an oath on the Hungarian Basic Law and not on his own scientific convictions if elected by Parliament.

On October 9, the OBT did not support the election of Zs. Varga 13-1 because

“The fact that the candidate has not previously performed any judicial activity in the judicial system cannot be ignored, has no experience in the courtroom, and has no practical background in litigation and judicial administration. Since the regime change, only the person who had previously served as a judge for a longer or shorter period of time has served as President of the Supreme Court and the Curia.

At the same time, the council, of which the president of the Curia is a member, recognized the candidate’s merits in the scientific field, his experience in the judiciary in general as a constitutional judge and deputy chief prosecutor, and his personal qualities and training. According to the OBT statement, “it was convincing and reassuring what the candidate said at the hearing about the devastating effect of the legal unity, the authority of the judiciary and the public criticism of recent cases in pending cases.”

Viktor Vadász, a member of the OBT, later explained to Klubrádió that, from an external point of view, the decision is worrying because the prosecution and the court are almost two separate powers. From the inside, there are two different professions.

– stressed the criminal judge of the Metropolitan Court.

Free choice of kings?

In connection with his appointment, he was also drawn in the eyes of Zs. Varga, who at a conference a few years ago said that the possibility of re-legalizing the legal dynasty and restoring the Apostolic Kingdom, as well as legalizing the free choice of king, should be considered.

In a 2010 study on constitutionality, Zs. Varga argued that speed could impede a thorough debate, and without a thorough debate, the long-term authority of the new constitution would be compromised. As a possible way to resolve the contradiction, he suggested:

“If the most internal level of the constitution does not decide the most important questions of the form of government and the form of government, but contains a preamble and a set of constitutional principles that derive” support “any change without changes until it is finalized “.

Well, it’s not the same!

DK turns to the European Commission

And finally, the Democratic Coalition (DK) turns to the European Commission to prevent the “right hand of Péter Polt” from being the president of the Curia, announced Sándor Rónai, the party’s MEP, on 10 October. According to Rónai, András Zs. Varga was “connected with Péter Polt and Fidesz by a thousand threads” and was already “part of the Orbán system when the Prosecutor’s Office let the criminals of Fidesz run under his first government.” (András Zs. Varga was not the Deputy Attorney General in criminal law, but in public law – Ed.)

(Cover image: Zsolt András Varga, candidate for the presidency of the Curia, at the meeting of the Parliamentary Commission for Justice in the Delegations Hall of Parliament on October 8, 2020. Photo: Tibor Illyés / MTI)