Part I — Situation overview

On 22 September 2026, Deputy Prosecutor General István Lajtár moved, on a single day, for the suspension of the parliamentary immunity of three Members of the National Assembly. Former minister Balázs Hankó (Fidesz) is suspected of breach of trust linked to the National Cultural Fund, causing a financial loss of HUF 17.3 billion, and according to the prosecution service the aim is already to bring charges. In the case of Miklós Seszták (KDNP), former Minister of National Development, there is a suspicion of accepting unlawful advantages totalling more than HUF 12 billion. According to the investigation, between 2015 and 2018 he received, through an intermediary, more than HUF 11 billion from the representative of companies under contract with Volánbusz, a further more than HUF 1 billion from a construction group, and HUF 270 million in connection with sports-facility investments. The third request is directed against Prime Minister Péter Magyar, over a night-time incident in June 2024 in which the Central Chief Prosecutor’s Office for Investigations is examining, on suspicion of theft, the taking of a mobile phone and its being thrown into the Danube. This case is not new. Péter Polt, the then Prosecutor General, had already requested the suspension in September 2024, and in 2025 the European Parliament did not waive the immunity of Péter Magyar, then a Member of the European Parliament. The investigation resumed after his European Parliament mandate ended upon his election as a Member of the National Assembly.

The day is unprecedented since the change of regime: no criminal case had previously reached a sitting Prime Minister. Reactions immediately split in two. In a video message, the Prime Minister asked the National Assembly to suspend his own immunity without delay, while calling it an attempt by the “Polt-style prosecution service” to place his case alongside the billion-forint public-money cases. The Office of the Prosecutor General rejected the criticism in two statements; on 23 September it said that “in performing the constitutional tasks of the prosecution service, the sole yardstick and guiding standard is lawfulness and impartiality, equality before the law”. On the Fidesz side, János Bóka spoke of show-trial proceedings in Balázs Hankó’s case, and Balázs Hankó himself referred to political pressure. Meanwhile, on the same day, Parliament did suspend the immunity of Máté Kocsis (143 yes, 44 no) and of Miklós Panyi and János Pócs (141 yes, 45 no). In that case the Pest Central District Court had requested the suspension because of private-prosecution defamation proceedings. It is noteworthy that the National Assembly’s Committee on Immunity rejected the suspension proposal with 3 votes in favour and 3 against, yet the plenary session decided in favour of suspension.

MIAK’s reading: the substantive question of the day is not whom the step “favours”. Two structural problems are visible. The first is that the orders of magnitude of the three requests are not comparable: a suspected financial loss of HUF 17.3 billion and one of more than HUF 12 billion, on the one hand, and the disappearance of a mobile phone, on the other, are not in the same weight class. If these appear on one day, as a joint communication package, then the accusation of lumping cases together is not refuted by reasoning but reinforced by silence. The second is that under the order of the Fundamental Law it is the National Assembly that decides on the suspension of immunity, meaning the final word belongs to a political body — and where the committee’s position and the plenary decision point in opposite directions, the reasons for the decision appear nowhere in writing today. Credibility is decided at these two points, not by vote counts.

Part II — Foundations in the literature

Three authors provide a framework for interpreting the situation. According to the formula of Robert Klitgaard (American economist, one of the founders of corruption research), corruption thrives where monopoly and discretionary power meet without accountability — in the case of the prosecuting authority, discretionary power is unavoidable, so the question always narrows down to the accountability element. Susan Rose-Ackerman (American lawyer-economist, a leading researcher of the political economy of corruption) adds that a strong, independent prosecuting body is a useful tool only if it represents a credible, long-term commitment and if its use for political ends can be ruled out. Montesquieu (French Enlightenment thinker, the classic author of the separation of powers) already held in the 18th century that the main safeguard of the institution of the public prosecutor is that, if the public prosecutor is suspected of abuse, he can be obliged to disclose his reasons. All three lines of thought lead to the same place: the solution is not to restrict discretionary power but reasoning and documentation. The detailed treatment of the literature — by author, with quotations — is in section 6.4 Literature in detail.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable steps. None of them interferes with ongoing proceedings, and none of them takes a position on the guilt of the suspects. All three fill the same gap: today, at the most important steps of the immunity procedure, no public reasoning that can be checked afterwards is produced.

3.1 Separate, public reasoning for each immunity request (a practice that can be applied immediately)

MIAK proposes that the Office of the Prosecutor General publish each of its immunity requests with its own public reasoning, even if several requests are submitted on the same day. The reasoning should contain: the legal classification of the suspicion and the statutory penalty range, the date on which proceedings were initiated and their course so far, and an explanation of why the suspension of immunity is necessary now from the point of view of gathering evidence. The current situation generates distrust precisely because there is no written answer to this question — why today, and why together. In Klitgaard’s framework (see 6.4.1) this strengthens the accountability element without curtailing the discretionary power of the prosecuting authority: the prosecution service still decides when and against whom it files a request, but it answers for its decision with arguments. The standard can also be applied retrospectively to the three requests now submitted, and since it requires no legislative amendment, the Office of the Prosecutor General can introduce it within its own competence. This is a procedural application of the A6 checks-and-balances programme point.

3.2 A mandatory committee hearing with minutes, and reasoning if the plenary departs from the committee (amendment of the Rules of Procedure by 31 December 2026)

MIAK proposes that the National Assembly amend its Rules of Procedure so that a hearing by the Committee on Immunity is mandatory in every immunity case, verbatim minutes are taken of the meeting, and the minutes — with the exception of data from ongoing investigations — are made public within 30 days after the plenary vote. If the plenary session decides differently from the committee’s position, the parliamentary group putting forward the motion should be obliged to attach written reasoning to the minutes. The day of 22 September showed exactly this gap: the committee, in a 3:3 vote, did not recommend the suspension, yet the plenary voted for it, and today no official document says anything about the reasons for this. The departure is not in itself unlawful — the plenary session is not bound by the committee’s position — but without reasoning the decision is indistinguishable from the mere will of the majority. The proposal follows the logic of the I10 constitutional stress test: it examines what would happen if the same procedure were applied by a majority acting in bad faith.

3.3 A register of priority cases and an extended reporting standard for the prosecution service (first publication by 31 May 2027)

MIAK proposes that the Office of the Prosecutor General keep and publish an aggregate register that reports annually: how many immunity requests were prepared, in which categories of offence, how much time elapsed between the establishment of the suspicion and the submission of the request, and in how many cases the National Assembly decided for or against suspension. The data should form part of the Prosecutor General’s annual report to the National Assembly — this reporting obligation follows from the Fundamental Law, so no new legal institution is needed, only an extension of the report’s content. The resulting time series makes it possible to check the claim of an “equal yardstick” not from speeches but from data: if the time elapsed until submission regularly differs depending on whether a governing-party or an opposition Member is concerned, this becomes measurable. This register is at the same time preparation for setting up the independent anti-corruption investigation body under A10: the competence of the future bureau can only be sensibly measured out if it is visible where bottlenecks arise today.

The common principle of the three proposals is that the impartiality of the prosecuting authority should not be declared but documented. Rose-Ackerman’s argument (see 6.4.2) warns of exactly this: a strong investigating and prosecuting authority can serve accountability and political score-settling with the same toolkit — from the outside, only the documentation of the procedure distinguishes the two. This yardstick can be applied in the same way under the current and the next government, and it protects today’s opposition and today’s governing party alike.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Justice system The prosecution service’s decisions become verifiable afterwards; the accusation of lumping cases together can be refuted or substantiated with arguments The reasoning obligation could lead to leaks of investigation data if the disclosure limit is not drawn precisely
Public administration and legislation The immunity procedure becomes more predictable; the committee’s work acquires real stakes A mandatory hearing may slow down the procedure, especially in urgent evidentiary situations
Society On the basis of the data series, it can be decided whether the equal yardstick works, regardless of party sympathies Public reasoning also opens up a field for political communication; the arguments may be overridden by the daily debate

The main balancing question is the scope of the reasoning. If the prosecution service discloses too little, the proposal remains formal; if too much, it endangers the ongoing investigation. The solution is to publish the legal classification, the chronology and the necessity argument — without presenting the evidence. The second balancing question is timing: a mandatory committee hearing may take days, so the amendment of the Rules of Procedure must include an abbreviated procedure for cases where there is an immediate risk of evidence being lost. The proposal works if both exceptions are narrow and precisely defined — otherwise the exception becomes the rule.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth following? (suggested KPIs)

MIAK suggests following these performance indicators (KPIs, Key Performance Indicators):

  • Reasoning rate: the percentage of submitted immunity requests accompanied by separate, public reasoning. Suggested target: 100% from the first half of 2027.
  • Publicity of minutes: the percentage of Committee on Immunity minutes that become available within 30 days after the vote. Suggested target: above 90%.
  • Dispersion of processing time: the median time elapsed between the establishment of the suspicion and the submission of the request, broken down separately for governing-party and opposition Members. If the two values diverge persistently, that in itself is a signal.
  • Rule-of-law assessment: Hungary’s World Bank Control of Corruption indicator, which stood at −0.17 in 2024. It is worth following whether this value improves by 2028 — although it is a slow-moving, multi-factor indicator.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s request is simple: every substantive step of the immunity procedure should be accompanied by written, public reasoning — the prosecution service’s request, the committee’s position and a plenary decision departing from the committee alike. This does not slow down accountability, nor does it protect anyone from proceedings; it makes it possible for anyone to check the decisions later. The message of 22 September is not that the prosecution service made a mistake, but that in today’s procedure good faith and bad faith are indistinguishable from the outside.

The proposal engages two MIAK foundational values. Accountability is affected because a decision can only be held to account if its reasons are recorded — without reasoning, the debate always gets stuck on who believes whom. And ideology-free decision-making, because the same yardstick is uncomfortable at once for today’s governing majority, which would have to give reasons for its plenary decisions, and for today’s opposition, against whose Members proceedings are under way. A rule is good if it cannot be known in advance whom it will benefit.

Part VI — Reasoning and further sources

6.1 Press framing by spectrum

In the left-liberal band, the emphasis was on the legal content and on the difference in magnitude between the cases. 444.hu set out the suspicions in two separate articles: in one it detailed the billion-scale corruption suspicion against Miklós Seszták and the penalty ranges of five to ten years concerning Balázs Hankó, in the other it dealt separately with the theft-related request against the Prime Minister and its 2024 antecedents. This split is in itself a position: it suggests that there is no justification for handling the two groups of cases together. HVG added an expert framework, quoting political scientist Dániel Mikecz, according to whom the current step does little to improve the prosecution service’s image, and the real turning point will be if the National Assembly actually waives the Members’ immunity. Telex’s reports were confined to stating the facts (the articles were not publicly downloadable at the time of retrieval).

In the public-affairs and economic band the emphasis is different. Portfolio approached the case in an explanatory, question-and-answer format: whom it concerns, on what suspicion, and who decides — this framing serves to bring the legal concepts to the lay reader, without political judgement. 24.hu focused on the course and expected timing of the other immunity case running in parallel, the defamation suit.

In the pro-government conservative band, the framing is built around the claim of show-trial proceedings. In one article Magyar Nemzet published Balázs Hankó’s statement about political pressure, while in another it welcomed the request against the Prime Minister and went into the circumstances of the 2024 night-time incident. This duality is peculiar: the same paper presents the same step by the prosecution service as politically motivated in one case and as legitimate accountability in the other. From MIAK’s point of view, this is precisely the argument for the proposal: as long as there is no separate, public reasoning for each case, both readings appear equally supportable.

6.2 Facts and data

Data Value Source
Suspicion against Balázs Hankó (financial loss) HUF 17.3 billion Statement of the Office of the Prosecutor General, 22 September 2026
Suspicion against Miklós Seszták (unlawful advantage, total) more than HUF 12 billion Statement of the Office of the Prosecutor General, 22 September 2026
Of which from companies under contract with Volánbusz more than HUF 11 billion (2015–2018) Statement of the Office of the Prosecutor General, 22 September 2026
Suspension of Máté Kocsis’s immunity 143 yes, 44 no National Assembly, 22 September 2026
Suspension of Miklós Panyi’s and János Pócs’s immunity 141 yes, 45 no National Assembly, 22 September 2026
Vote of the Committee on Immunity in the same case 3 yes, 3 no (did not recommend suspension) Committee on Immunity of the National Assembly, 21 September 2026
Hungary’s Control of Corruption indicator −0.17 (2024) World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators

Two provisions of the Fundamental Law are relevant as the public-law framework. Under Article 4(2), Members of the National Assembly enjoy parliamentary immunity — that is, immunity is not a personal privilege but a guarantee of the Member’s independence. Article 29 defines the prosecution service as an independent constitutional institution that is not subordinate to any of the classic branches of power; the Prosecutor General reports annually to the National Assembly, and his or her election requires the votes of two-thirds of the Members. Two often-confused propositions follow from this: the prosecution service is not part of the judiciary (that is the branch of power of the courts), and it is not the Government but the National Assembly that decides on the suspension of parliamentary immunity.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Justice (programme points) — procedural guarantees of judicial and prosecutorial independence, the methodology of the constitutional stress test (programme point ID: I4, I10);
  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — making checks and balances measurable, preparing the independent anti-corruption investigation body (programme point ID: A6, A10);
  • Public administration and e-government (background material) — the documentation and public data disclosure of parliamentary and administrative procedures.

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Robert Klitgaard: Controlling Corruption

Klitgaard derives from the principal–agent–client model when irregular conduct spreads in an organisation. According to his thesis, this happens where the agent has a monopoly, broad discretionary power, and weak accountability towards the principal. The book captures this in a concise formula:

“CORRUPTION = MONOPOLY + DISCRETION − ACCOUNTABILITY”

In the case of the prosecuting authority, the first two terms are givens, and for good reason: enforcing the state’s claim to punish is a state monopoly, and discretion is inseparable from professional decision-making. That leaves only one movable term in the formula. In the current matter of the immunity requests, this means that the question is not whether the prosecution service submitted the three requests on one day — that falls within its discretionary power — but whether it attaches reasoning from which the logic of the decision can be reconstructed afterwards.

📖 Source: Robert Klitgaard: Controlling Corruption

6.4.2 Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government

Summarising the international experience of independent anti-corruption institutions, Rose-Ackerman presents at once the advantage of a strong prosecuting authority and the risk that comes with it. In analysing the turnaround in Hong Kong and Singapore, she notes that success was made up of three elements: commitment at the highest level, credible law enforcement and reform of the civil service. But she immediately attaches a condition to this:

“A tough, independent anticorruption agency can be a potent tool so long as it represents a credible long-term commitment and can avoid being misused for political ends.”

The author adds that even the Hong Kong commission was not free of such accusations, and that an anti-corruption body subordinate to an autocratic leader can become a tool for suppressing the opposition. This is exactly the structure of the current Hungarian debate. The fact that the prosecuting authority acted simultaneously against the governing side and against figures of the former government neither proves nor refutes impartiality in itself — the difference lies in the documentation of the procedure, not in symmetry.

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

6.4.3 Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws

Montesquieu describes the institution of the public prosecutor as one of the most important innovations of his age, and for a very concrete reason: it is good because it ends the professional activity of private informers and entrusts the prosecution to a single, identifiable, accountable actor. The key sentence of the chapter concerns responsibility:

“if this public avenger were suspected to abuse his office, he would soon be obliged to mention his author”

This 18th-century formulation is essentially the principled ancestor of today’s reasoning obligation. Montesquieu did not want to take away the public prosecutor’s discretionary power; rather, he stipulated that when suspicion arises, the background of the decision must be capable of being disclosed. Applied to the requests of 22 September: the answer to the question “why all at once” is not a favour but a long-known condition for the functioning of the institution.

📖 Source: Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws

6.5 International comparison

European practice shows two directions. The immunity procedure of the European Parliament — which is a direct antecedent in the current case, since in 2025 the body did not waive the immunity of the then Member — is based on a written report: the rapporteur of the legal affairs committee prepares a reasoned report in which the suspicion of political persecution is examined separately, and the report is public after the vote. This is exactly the kind of documentation that proposal 3.2 would transfer into the Hungarian procedure. In Germany, the Bundestag grants a general authorisation for initiating proceedings at the beginning of the term, while individual decisions are prepared by the immunity committee, whose practice is set out in summary guidelines of principle — there, predictability comes from a standard laid down in advance. In the Scandinavian systems parliamentary immunity is narrower to begin with, but in return the procedure is less political: the decision is more of a technical act. All three models agree that the place of political discretion is taken either by written reasoning or by a rule fixed in advance — in the Hungarian system there is currently neither.

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A6 — Strengthening checks and balances
  • A10 — Independent Anti-Corruption Investigation Bureau (CPIB model)
  • A5 — Whistleblower system

Justice

  • I10 — Constitutional “stress test”
  • I4 — Protecting judicial independence
  • I1 — Judicial transparency

Proposed new programme point: A reasoning and documentation standard for the immunity procedure — for the Justice area.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 23 September 2026 — topic 1):

Knowledge base references (literature):

  • 📖 Robert Klitgaard: Controlling Corruption
  • 📖 Susan Rose-Ackerman: Corruption and Government — Causes, Consequences, and Reform
  • 📖 Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws
  • 📖 Fundamental Law of Hungary (Articles 4 and 29)

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Justice (programme points; programme point ID: I4, I10)
  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A6, A10)
  • MIAK policy area: Public administration and e-government (background material)
  • MIAK press monitor, 23 September 2026 — topic 1, score: 90/100

Supplementary public data sources:

  • World Bank — Worldwide Governance Indicators, Control of Corruption indicator (Hungary, 2024)
  • Rules of Procedure of the European Parliament — the procedure for waiving parliamentary immunity

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