A new legislative proposal aims to introduce several exciting innovations in civil litigation. The objectives include speeding up court proceedings, increasing public oversight over litigation, modernizing legal education and academic research, enhancing the Supreme Court’s (Kúria) function of ensuring legal uniformity, and reducing the administrative burden on courts related to their obligation to provide reasoning. We’ve summarized the most intriguing innovations from the proposal below.
Courts to Pay “Penalties”
The possibility of financial compensation for excessively long civil procedures was introduced by a law adopted in 2021. That legislation defined such compensation as a claim enforceable by the parties and outlined when the duration of a proceeding is deemed reasonable overall. For exceeding this time limit, compensation was set at HUF 400 per day. In practice, this amount didn’t provide meaningful reparation for the parties, not even in the case of delays lasting an entire year.
The current legislative proposal—supplementing the existing framework—would sanction the court for exceeding specific procedural deadlines. Rather than focusing on the overall length of a lawsuit, it targets individual judicial acts with statutory deadlines. If the presiding judge exceeds a deadline set by law, the court would be obligated to provide compensation ex officio (i.e., without a request from the parties). This compensation would be calculated daily, starting from the day after the missed deadline, at 1.5% of the minimum wage valid on the first day of the delay—currently HUF 4,362 per day. The proposal also clarifies the relationship between the old and new regimes: no additional claims could be made under the earlier rules for periods already compensated under the new ones.
In theory, this could pressure courts to adhere more strictly to deadlines. However, in practice, the Civil Procedure Code contains relatively few concrete deadlines binding on the courts. Moreover, while the intention is to expedite proceedings, the additional administration required to assess and pay compensation would further strain court resources. It remains uncertain whether this measure will actually help conclude cases within a reasonable timeframe.
Fast Track
One of the headline items in the legislative proposal is the introduction of the so-called simplified civil procedure. According to the reasoning attached to the proposal, the rise of digitalization and modern technologies has created growing demand for a type of legal proceeding that parties could choose voluntarily—offering genuinely expedited “fast-track” litigation. The parties would need to agree in advance to resolve their dispute through such a proceeding, provided the case is not consumer protection, labor law, or personal status related. However, this would override several procedural safeguards; the proposal itself acknowledges that essential rights would be sacrificed on the altar of speed.
In simplified civil cases—unlike traditional ones—the process would not be divided into a preparatory and a substantive hearing phase. The court would proceed on a priority basis, with a general obligation to act within 8 days. Proceedings would be conducted entirely in writing, without oral hearings. No counterclaims or set-offs would be allowed, and only expert and documentary evidence would be admissible, and even that to a limited extent. Appeals would also be restricted, with no possibility of taking the case to the Supreme Court (Kúria).
In exchange for these “concessions”, the proposed regulation offers reduced fees—70% of the standard court fee—and drastically shortened procedural deadlines (15 days to submit a statement of defense, followed by 30 days for the judgment).
The idea of receiving a ruling within a few months is undeniably appealing. Nonetheless, the practical viability of simplified procedures remains questionable. It’s hard to imagine that parties would, at the time of contract signing, focus solely on the timeline of a potential future dispute and preemptively waive crucial procedural safeguards just to gain speed.
That said, such procedures may find their place in lower-value contracts, or in cases where parties regularly conclude many small-value contracts with one another (e.g., under a framework agreement). In such scenarios, predictability and efficiency may outweigh the risks of reduced procedural protections.
Live-Streamed Hearings
The legislative proposal would also introduce the public streaming of court hearings, enhancing social oversight over the fairness of proceedings. Importantly, courts would not be universally required to provide online access—only if the necessary technical infrastructure is available at the specific court. Given the current state of court infrastructure, widespread implementation of online access remains a distant prospect, as acknowledged in the proposal’s justification.
Under the draft, the first 100 successfully registered adult individuals would be allowed to attend hearings online as observers. Audio and video recording would be prohibited—though it remains unclear how this ban would actually be enforced. Law and public administration students, lecturers, and researchers would be given priority during registration.
By Peter Szilas, Managing Associate, Jalsovszky
