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VIKTOR ZOLTÁN KAZAI Criminal law codificatio V. Z. K.: Criminal law reform was slow, taking shape in several stages, and was only partially implemented while you were secretary of state. In your writings and interviews you named several reasons for this. For example, you suggested that the time was not exactly right for criminal law legislation, since other issues took priority at the time of the regime change. You also mentioned that certain amendments failed because of the solid resistance from courts and law enforcement. Was there any specific reform idea you could not bring to fruition that you regretted? K. B.: I don’t really remember. What is certain, is that we were often forced to change our ideas in the course of preparing the bills. It was customary to send out regulatory concepts for preliminary consultation. Most of our conflicts arose with the Supreme Court and the General Prosecutor’s Office, even though lower level authorities were mostly for our reform approach. They retained their pre-transition influence and stubbornly resisted any change. It is true that I had it easier during the MDF (Magyar Demokrata Fórum, Hungarian Democratic Forum) government, when higher courts and the general prosceutor’s office were full of old cadres who were trying to keep a low profile. But later on, they started threatening us that they would jump ship from the preparatory team if we kept a certain solution and that the whole law would come to nothing. Of course, criminal procedure is typically an area of law that is hard to externally dictate, since it is largely shaped through the routines of those who implement the law. Still, I can’t resist the idea that they were being unduly osbstinate for the sole reason that they were used to the old rules. There was a fundamental problem with the Supreme Court. Namely, they couldn’t quite decide what role the judges should play in the procedure. On the one hand, they wanted to control the case, but on the other hand, they wanted to delegate a significant part of the workload to others. This is why to this day we have an appeals system where every court of appeal basically restarts the entire procedure and then sends it back for a retrial. For some reason we cannot get into the mindset where an appeals court confines itself to the plea at hand. European Convention on Human Rights V. Z. K.: Hungary signed the European Convention on Human Rights in 1990, but we dragged out ratification over a number of years. You and Tamás Bán were entrusted with a comprehensive study of the legislative changes necessary to comply with the Convention. You published a study summarizing the results of the analysis in 1992, proposing amendments to merely twelve laws and recommending that the +30 +
