The main task of the Ministry of Justice, which has recently been separated to work individually again, is to legislate and prepare legislation.
Legislation is the essential tool that the Ministry of Justice uses to fight corruption within the framework of the governmental division of labour. The new Criminal Law Code deals with corruption crimes in a separate chapter, and unlike the former intricate provisions of law, it separates bribery relating to business activities, bribery by public officials and bribery committed in judicial or administrative authority proceedings.
It also makes a clear distinction between the perpetrators of active and passive briberies. It is the duty of the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights to deal with whistleblowing complaints and public interest disclosures relating to corruption, but it was the Ministry of Justice that played a key role in ensuring the legislative background thereof.
The legislation passed to protect whistleblowers of corruption ensures that persons who report corruption cases coming to their notice are entitled to legal protection and anonymity in accordance with a new Act on complaints and public disclosures having entered into force this year. Whistleblowers are guaranteed legal counsel and confidentiality through lawyers engaged for the protection of whistleblowers.
At his hearing before the Parliament's Justice Affairs Committee on 3rd June 2014, Dr. László Trócsányi, as candidate for the position of Minister of Justice emphasized the need for uniform actions to be taken by the government and pointed out that the fight against corruption is not a task to be fulfilled exclusively by the Ministry of Justice. Instead, it should be considered as an obligation for the government as well.
Although the Ministry of Justice overtook most of the anti-corruption functions of its legal predecessor, the Ministry of Public Administration of Justice, it started to work hard to make the administration of justice – as understood in a broader sense – more effective, since transparent, fair and speedy proceedings are necessary and essential requirements of the rule of law. Guaranteeing legal protection for whistleblowers of corruption in an Act is a progress, which facilitates maintaining confidence in the administration of justice and promotes the exercising of human rights in order to have corruption crimes detected.
The work of the Ministry of Justice aimed at creating the new rules of civil, criminal and administrative proceedings, the preparation of the reform of the judicial expert system, and making the Parliament adopt the new rules concerning judicial enforcement agents upon the proposal of the Ministry of Justice should all be driven by the objective that both private and public life should be free of practices of unlawful gains or misuse of function.