Since 2011, when the legislator - quoting Ferenc Deák – "re-buttoned the waistcoat of the court system", we have experienced a "golden age" not seen since the age of the Compromise. In the last 7 years we have had the opportunity to make such developments in infrastructure that have been missing since the beginning of the 20th century, and further developments will follow in the future, "said the President of the National Office for the Judiciary (NOJ) in her sixth annual parliamentary report of the year 2017.

Dr. Tünde Handó underlined: the performance of courts has improved considerably over the last few years. - And this is not just what we say: every year the European Commission ranks the Member States on the basis of their court indicators. According to the most recent scoreboard, at EU level, we are the fastest in judging administrative cases, and we are the second in terms of backlog. Backlog in civil cases is the fourth lowest and Hungarian courts are the 5th fastest in solving civil cases – reported the results the president of the NOJ.

dr.Tünde Handó added: domestic data also shows that the performance of Hungarian courts further improved in 2017: last year’s experience shows that 90 % of lawsuits are completed within a year, since 2010 the number of cases pending before the courts for more than 2 years has been reduced by more than 40 %,  90 % of civil judgments and 80 % of criminal verdicts are final and enforceable at first instance before district courts, which means that Hungarian courts are doing their job quickly and at high professional standards. 

With regard to the challenges in 2017, the President of the NOJ pointed out the preparation of courts for the application of the new Civil Procedure Code and the Code of Administrative Procedure effective since 1st January 2018 as well as the new Criminal Procedure Act, which became enforceable on 1st July 2018. The main objectives of the NOJ were to create an environment where customers do not notice any changes in the system. For this purpose, thousands of judges, assistant judges and trainees have been involved in local and central training sessions. A 1800-page textbook for the new Civil Procedure Code, 860-page textbook for the Administrative Procedure Code, 1500-page textbook for the Criminal Procedure Act  was prepared. "Such reform, which is practically a reform of the entire national procedural law, has not been seen in Hungarian legal history," noted dr. Tünde Handó.

At the same time, courts experienced a large-scale digital change, the President of the NOJ said: the Digital Court project serves a dual purpose. On one hand, it is meant to reduce bureaucracy, but at the same time it helps customers to do their jobs faster, more efficiently and at a lower cost. The program, as she pointed out, is multifold, since it includes not only the development of the IT background and equipment of courts (for example, the acquisition of computers, speech recognition software) but also innovations such as the introduction of electronic case files.

- The latter would enable customers, their legal representatives and judges to access their case documents at any time, anywhere, safely and easily, said the President of the NOJ. Then she went on to speak about the Via Video project, which provides the opportunity  to record pictures and sound of court hearings and can also be used for distance hearing.

The Parliament will decide on the acceptance of the report in its spring session.