Part I — Situation overview

On 27 August 2026 the Justice and Constitutional Affairs Committee of the National Assembly nominated Anna Róza Unger, associate professor of the Faculty of Social Sciences of ELTE, for the office of president of the National Asset Recovery and Asset Protection Office (NVVH). The result of the vote was 6 in favour, 1 against, 1 abstention; the two other candidates heard — Miklós Ligeti, legal director of Transparency International Hungary, and the businessman Nicholas Sárvári — did not obtain a nomination. In the twelve-member committee eight Tisza, three Fidesz and one Mi Hazánk members of parliament sit, but only the Tisza members took part in the vote: Fidesz stayed away from the entire procedure, because it considers the regulation of the office unconstitutional on several points. The single negative vote was cast by the deputy chair of the committee, Márton Melléthei-Barna, who justified his decision to 24.hu by saying that he would have wanted a lawyer in the post, someone who knows the operation of the prosecution service more closely. Among the applications for the deputy president posts the committee proposed Katalin Tasnádi for the investigative post, while it declared the procedure for the public finance deputy president unsuccessful, and will re-advertise it. The plenary, secret vote is due on Friday; according to the act, the election of the president requires the votes of two-thirds of the members of parliament, and the mandate runs for six years.

The background has been taking shape for two weeks. The National Assembly decided on the creation of the office at the end of July with a two-thirds majority; 96 people applied for the president’s post and 68 for the deputy president posts, and for each office the committee invited to a hearing the three applicants who achieved the highest scores. One of the candidates, the corruption researcher Dávid Jancsics, withdrew on the Monday evening before the hearing. Part of the selection was conducted in a closed sitting — the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union criticised this as a substantive restriction of publicity — while 444.hu called the process “strange” in two consecutive reports. MIAK already discussed this axis, that is, the selection standard itself, in detail in an entry of 25 August 2026; today’s analysis deliberately concerns the next stage of the process, that which is decided after the election.

Yesterday’s debate in fact conflates two sharply distinct questions. One concerns the professional record of the nominee: the Lawyers’ Circle issued a statement arguing that the office requires a legal qualification, experience in the application of criminal law and in the representation of the prosecution; Péter Bárándy, former justice minister, likewise missed this on ATV, while Ákos Hadházy would have considered Miklós Ligeti more suitable. The other question was raised by the nominee herself at her hearing, when she declared: “Within six years, which is the first presidential term of the office, it is in my view foolish to think that there will be final judgments here.” The pro-government press read this as an unfulfilled campaign promise, and the communications director of Fidesz called the nominee a “political commissar”. MIAK’s reading differs from both frames: the credibility of the office will be decided neither by the leader’s diploma nor by the absence of final judgments, but by whether the office states in advance, in figures, what it undertakes for the first year. For in the case of a body starting out with strong powers but without a measurable undertaking, the risk of disappointment and the risk of excessive power stem from the same lack, the undefined mandate.

Part II — Foundations in the literature

Before turning to the concrete proposals, it is worth setting out the conceptual framework in which the question can be interpreted. Aristotle (ancient Greek philosopher, author of the Politics, founder of comparative constitutional theory), in his enumeration of the necessary public offices, names as a separate item the rendering of account and the calling to account of officeholders, and in his criticism of the Spartan arrangement he states that the holder of an office may not be immune from responsibility — for him, therefore, the order of rendering account is an element of the state organisation present at its foundation, not a subsequent correction. Peter F. Drucker (Austrian-American management thinker, founder of the methodology of measuring organisational effectiveness) ties executive effectiveness to the question of what the executive can contribute to the results of the institution he serves — not to his activity but to its outwardly measurable yield; this provides the basis in principle of MIAK’s first proposal. And Kaufmann, Kraay and Zoido-Lobatón (researchers of the World Bank, developers of the international system of governance indicators) showed that the control of corruption is not an intangible quality but can be measured by an indicator compiled from several sources and comparable across countries — there is therefore an external standard for the performance of the office as well, one not produced by the office itself. The detailed treatment of the literature — author by author, with quotations — can be found in section 6.4 Literature in detail.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures, each of which concerns the period after the election of the office’s leadership, and none of which requires a legislative amendment: two can be introduced by the office’s own decision, and one by a resolution of the National Assembly.

3.1 A public, quantified annual undertaking within 60 days of the election

Within sixty days of taking office the president of the NVVH should publish a quantified first-year work plan of at most ten pages. This has to contain at least five data: the planned number of investigations opened, the target value of the assets affected by asset-securing (freezing) measures, the ratio of this to the office’s own damage estimate, the average planned turnaround time of cases, and the expected proportion of cases forwarded to other authorities — primarily to the prosecution service. In the logic of the Drucker audit, that is, of the subsequent comparison of the expected and the actual result (see 6.4.2), what matters is not the size of the target figure but that it should exist: without a measurable undertaking the performance of the office will remain for years exclusively the subject of political debate, and the absence of final judgments — which for procedural reasons is indeed realistic — will look like a failure even if the office has worked well within its own competence. The publication of the undertaking is the measurement side of MIAK’s A10 programme point, and its data provision channel is the A1 public money dashboard.

3.2 A publication protocol for the public asset protection risk assessment (before the first public list)

According to Magyar Nemzet’s account, the act on the office provides that the public asset protection risk assessment does not qualify as an administrative authority procedure, may not establish an infringement or a payment obligation and may not serve as the direct basis of a sanction — yet the office publishes it on its website. This structure is in itself defensible, but without procedural guarantees it operates publicity as a sanction. MIAK therefore proposes that before the appearance of the first list the office should adopt and publish a protocol laying down that: the person concerned receives the finding affecting them at least fifteen days before publication, may submit observations, the observation appears simultaneously with the risk assessment on the same surface, and a correction or withdrawal procedure is available if the data subsequently proves to be erroneous. This package of guarantees does not weaken the office: the power of publicity (A6) works precisely when the credibility of the list cannot be attacked and the avenue of legal remedy is known.

3.3 A mid-term, independent performance review (by the end of 2029)

The National Assembly should prescribe in a resolution that at the halfway point of the office’s six-year term — by the end of 2029 — an independent expert body should examine whether the indicators undertaken under point 3.1 have been fulfilled, and that the plenary sitting should debate the report. The composition of the body should be fixed in advance (professional chambers, as well as members delegated by the Fiscal Council and the State Audit Office (ÁSZ)), and the review should not be about the removal of the head of the office but about whether the mandate and the set of instruments fit reality. This step is the institutional counterpart of the official-selection and rotation logic of KI7, and at the same time the application to a single body of the idea of the I10 constitutional stress test.

The three proposals are linked by a single principle: in the case of an office with strong competences operating through publicity, measurable self-limitation is not a weakness but the main source of legitimacy. Aristotle’s requirement of rendering account and Drucker’s question of results point in the same direction — the office will be independent of day-to-day politics if its judgment depends not on its good intentions but on standards proclaimed in advance and verifiable afterwards.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Institutional trust With a measurable undertaking fixed in advance, the judgment of the office moves out of day-to-day political debate; a public series of results gives it independent legitimacy The mechanical fulfilment of the undertaken target figures (a chase after quantity) may lead to the avoidance of difficult, complex cases
Legal certainty Through the publication protocol the public risk list becomes a predictable procedure, not an unforeseeable reputational sanction The fifteen-day period for observations may cause delay in genuinely urgent asset-securing cases — these require a separate, justified exception
Public administration The mid-term review provides a model for other bodies whose leaders are elected by parliament as well The review may become a political instrument if the composition of the body is not fixed in advance
Public money Communicating the recovery ratio measured against the estimated damage makes social expectations realistic An initially low ratio may appear as a communication failure, even though this is the natural pace of the procedures

The main question for consideration is the dual nature of publicity. The same instrument — the risk assessment appearing on the office’s website — which is the fastest and cheapest channel of accountability, is at the same time the least amenable to legal remedy: the consequence of being placed on the list sets in immediately, while rectification may take months. The proposal works if the protocol is born before the first list, because afterwards every guarantee will look like a retreat. The second point of consideration is the level of the target figures: too low an undertaking is not serious, while too high a one becomes a political weapon against the office in the following year. MIAK therefore proposes the communication of target values in bands and the simultaneous publication of the methodology, as is customary with central bank and budgetary forecasts as well.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth following? (proposed KPIs)

The performance indicators below (KPIs, Key Performance Indicators) are MIAK’s proposals, not governmental or official decisions. They are worth following:

  1. Undertaking fulfilment ratio — what percentage of the target figures published under 3.1 were fulfilled by the end of the first year (proposed target value: above 70 per cent, with the simultaneous communication of the methodology).
  2. Case handover yield — in what percentage of the cases handed over by the office to the prosecution service an investigation was ordered within 12 months. This indicator measures the quality of the office’s work, not the speed of the courts, and is therefore already interpretable at the beginning of the term.
  3. Objection and remedy indicator — the proportion of observations submitted against public risk assessments and the average turnaround time of corrections (proposed target: under 30 days).
  4. Movement of the external governance indicator — the control-of-corruption dimension of the World Bank’s system of governance indicators (see 6.4.3), over a six-year horizon. This is a slow indicator, but it is independent of the office’s own data provision.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s request to the National Assembly voting on Friday and to the leadership of the office to be elected is simple, and it is not about the person: within the first sixty days of the mandate the public, quantified annual undertaking and the publication protocol of the risk assessments should be born, and the National Assembly should prescribe in a resolution the mid-term, independent review. If these three steps take place, the operation of the office will remain verifiable for six years even if the court stage — as the presidential nominee herself indicated — takes a longer time. If they do not take place, every single step of the office will become a question of political trust, and after the next change of government it will be attackable with these very same arguments.

Two MIAK foundational values are in play in this matter. Accountability, because a body created for calling others to account must first make itself accountable — otherwise it cannot credibly enforce its own standard against others. And data-drivenness, because the debate about the nominee’s qualifications — whatever legitimate professional questions it raises — cannot be decided in advance; what can be decided is whether the office publishes verifiable figures about what it does. MIAK proposes that the public should measure the office by the latter.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 The framing of the press, spectrum by spectrum

The left-liberal band placed the procedural quality of the process in the foreground. The very title of 444.hu’s report highlights the unusual character of the committee sitting, and it describes in detail how the press — together with the camera tripods — was sent out of the room for the duration of the deputy president vote; the same paper published in a separate article the sentence uttered by the presidential nominee at the hearing about naming the actors by name. Telex lined up the professional reactions in three short pieces: the congratulations of Miklós Ligeti, the appreciative assessment of Zoltán Lakner, and the analysis of Gábor Török, according to which the two main candidates represented different conceptions of the office. HVG published on the same day two pieces standing in tension with one another — the factual report of the committee’s decision and the critical statement of the Lawyers’ Circle — and then in a longer analysis examined the burden of promise on the office itself. Népszava carried the expectation-moderating statement of the head of Transparency International Hungary.

The general public affairs band focused on the internal divisions of the decision: 24.hu and ATV both approached it from the direction of the single negative vote from the governing party’s side and of the criticism from sympathisers, and ATV devoted a separate piece to the professional criticism of Péter Bárándy. The economic band — Portfolio — likewise highlighted the reasoning of the single dissenting member of parliament, and noted that the centre of gravity of the nominee’s research work is party financing, not corruption.

The pro-government conservative band used two mutually reinforcing frames. Magyar Nemzet went round the extent of the office’s powers — the fine imposable without a court order and the public risk assessment — and drew a parallel between the practice of public listing and an earlier governmental step. Mandiner, by contrast, concentrated on expectation management: in a separate article it highlighted the statement concerning final judgments, in another it carried the characterisation by the communications director of Fidesz, and in a third the criticism of Ákos Hadházy — that is, the pro-government paper fitted criticism arriving from the opposition side into its own frame as well.

It is worth mentioning that the conservative and the left-liberal band regard the same sentence as the most important communication of the day (the one about the time horizon of final judgments), only they draw opposite conclusions from it: according to one this is the abandonment of the campaign promise, according to the other the honest statement of procedural reality. According to MIAK neither reading is complete, because both omit the same thing: that there is something to measure before the court stage as well.

6.2 Facts and data

Data Value Source
Number of applicants (president’s post) 96 persons HVG, 444.hu, 27 August 2026
Number of applicants (deputy president posts) 68 persons 444.hu, 27 August 2026
Committee vote on Anna Unger 6 in favour / 1 against / 1 abstention HVG, Telex, 24.hu, 27 August 2026
Committee vote on Miklós Ligeti 4 in favour / 0 against / 4 abstentions Telex, 444.hu, 27 August 2026
Committee vote on Nicholas Sárvári 3 in favour / 5 abstentions 444.hu, 27 August 2026
Composition of the committee 8 Tisza, 3 Fidesz, 1 Mi Hazánk 24.hu, Portfolio, 27 August 2026
Threshold for the election of the president two-thirds of the members, secret ballot Mandiner, 27 August 2026
Length of the presidential mandate 6 years Mandiner, HVG, 27 August 2026
Creation of the office end of July 2026, two-thirds parliamentary decision 444.hu, 27 August 2026

A methodological note on the order of magnitude of the public wealth that ended up in private pockets: according to HVG’s report the chair of the committee mentioned a band of 30–60 thousand billion forints “according to some estimates”. This figure is a wide estimation band originating from a political statement, not official statistics — MIAK therefore does not use it as a basis of calculation, and proposes that the office should prepare its own damage estimate, published together with its methodology, because only in this way can the recovery ratio under point 3.1 be interpreted.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — the model of the independent corruption investigation office (programme point ID: A10), the public channel of public money data (programme point ID: A1) and the measurement of checks and balances (programme point ID: A6);
  • Justice (programme points) — the public tracking of procedural turnaround times (programme point ID: I1) provides the reference basis for the office’s case handover yield, while the annual constitutional review is the model for the mid-term audit (programme point ID: I10);
  • Public administration and e-government (programme points) — the system of leadership selection and rotation, as well as the pre-appointment background check (programme point ID: KI7).

A public law delimitation which MIAK maintains in all its communication belonging here: the NVVH is neither a court nor part of the administration of justice. The administration of justice is the branch of power of the courts, while the prosecution service is an independent constitutional body; the prosecution service decides on the ordering of an investigation and on the bringing of charges, accepting instructions from no one in a specific case. The competences of the new office have to be interpreted against this framework, and a final judgment always remains a judicial act — this is another reason why it is misleading to measure the first year of a non-judicial body by the number of judgments.

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Aristotle: Politics

In his enumeration of the necessary public offices Aristotle names as a separate item the office which deals with the accounts, the scrutiny and the calling to account of officeholders — for him, therefore, accountability is not a subsequent correction but an independent element of the state organisation, to be built in at its foundation. In his criticism of the Spartan arrangement he sharpens this principle: the elders ought not to be immune from responsibility, and — this is an observation that cuts directly into today’s debate — it is a faulty practice if the person to be elected himself strives for the office, because the criterion of decision should be suitability, not striving. Treating the system of offices, the work records the following:

“the election of officeholders and their calling to account is the most important of all these”

In the case of the NVVH this duality means that the debate now under way about qualifications covers only one half of what Aristotle demands: the other half — the order of rendering account — is not yet determined, although in the Aristotelian framework it carries at least as much weight, and it can be supplied after the election too.

📖 Source: Aristotle: Politics

6.4.2 Peter F. Drucker: The Effective Executive

Drucker builds his whole theory of executive effectiveness on a single question which the executive has to put to himself:

“What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve?”

The essence of the question is the change of direction: attention moves from the executive’s own specialist field and organisational unit to the outwardly shown result of the institution as a whole, because according to Drucker results arise only outside, beyond the boundaries of the organisation. From this follows his other thesis as well: whoever takes responsibility for results behaves as an executive, irrespective of their position. In the case of the NVVH this proposes exactly the turn which today’s debate lacks: the question is not what professional background the president of the office arrives with, but whether they can formulate — and publicly undertake — that in which the result of the office will be measurable at the end of the first year. And the answer to Drucker’s question, laid down in figures, also protects the office from having its performance called to account by a standard — the number of final judgments — which is not decided within its own competence.

📖 Source: Peter F. Drucker: The Effective Executive — The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

6.4.3 Kaufmann–Kraay–Zoido-Lobatón: Governance Matters

The 1999 study of the three World Bank researchers laid the foundations of the system of indicators used to this day, which produces six aggregate governance indicators from more than three hundred sub-indicators; one of these is the control of corruption, another the dimension of voice and accountability. According to the authors’ summary

“six new aggregate indicators capture different dimensions of governance, and provide new evidence of a strong causal relationship from better governance to better development outcomes”

The essence of the methodology from the point of view of today’s topic is that the quality of governance cannot be known exclusively from the report of the institution concerned: the aggregation of several mutually independent sources gives an external standard comparable over time. Applied to the NVVH: there is also feedback on the office’s performance which the office does not produce about itself — this is why MIAK proposes that alongside the indicators formed from its own undertakings this external time series should also feature in the evaluation of the six-year term. Methodological honesty: this indicator is slow and has a wide margin of error, and in itself says nothing about the performance of a single year — precisely for this reason it is a supplementary, not a substitute standard.

📖 Source: Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay & Pablo Zoido-Lobatón: Governance Matters

6.5 International comparison

In the international practice of anti-corruption offices a measurable undertaking is nothing new. The Hong Kong and the Singapore offices both issue a regular, public annual report which contains the number of cases, the procedural turnaround time and the prosecution rate as well — these reports are what make it possible for the performance of the offices to be comparable in a time series spanning decades, independently of the judgment of the government of the day. From European practice the experience of the Romanian integrity authority is the most instructive counterpoint: there the institution produced a high number of cases for years, but at the court stage the proportion of final judgments remained low, and this subsequently undermined the credibility of the office as a whole — precisely because there was no standard fixed in advance and tailored to the office’s own competence against which the performance could have been measured. Both experiences support the same thing that the literature framework of 6.4 states: the way of measuring the mandate has to be laid down at the start of the office, not in the debates of the third year.

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A10 — Independent Corruption Investigation Office (CPIB model)
  • A1 — Public money dashboard
  • A6 — Strengthening checks and balances
  • A9 — Spin dictatorship prevention index

Justice

  • I1 — Judicial transparency
  • I10 — Constitutional “stress test”

Public administration and e-government

  • KI7 — System of official selection and rotation

Proposed new programme point: Standard for official mandates — a public and quantified performance undertaking at the start of bodies with independent competences whose leaders are elected by the National Assembly, with a mid-term independent review — for the Transparency and anti-corruption policy area.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 28 August 2026 — topic 1):

Knowledge base references (literature):

  • 📖 Aristotle: Politics
  • 📖 Peter F. Drucker: The Effective Executive — The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done
  • 📖 Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay & Pablo Zoido-Lobatón: Governance Matters

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A10, A1, A6, A9)
  • MIAK policy area: Justice (programme points; programme point ID: I1, I10)
  • MIAK policy area: Public administration and e-government (programme points; programme point ID: KI7)
  • MIAK press monitor, 28 August 2026 — topic 1, score: 95/100

Supplementary public data sources:

  • World Bank — Worldwide Governance Indicators, control of corruption time series
  • Transparency International — Corruption Perceptions Index, Hungarian time series
  • Annual reports of the Hong Kong and Singapore anti-corruption offices (basis of comparison)

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