In a court of second instance, Minister of Public Administration and Justice Tibor Navracsics has won the private lawsuit brought against him by former Commissioner for Data Protection András Jóri. The Ministry told MTI the news on Monday.

In autumn 2011, then Commissioner for Data Protection András Jóri launched a lawsuit against Mr. Navracsics, because he claimed that some months earlier the Minister had violated his personal rights in an address given to Parliament.

Last May Budapest Metropolitan Court rejected Mr. Jóri’s action in the first instance, saying that the Minister had not made untrue statements which purported to be factual, but in a response had simply given a summary which expressed his opinion. The Ministry of Public Administration and Justice has confirmed in a release that this ruling was upheld on 21 March by the Metropolitan Court of Appeal, which stated that Mr. Navracsics’ comments in Parliament were not in breach of the law.

During his term as Commissioner for Data Protection, András Jóri filed lawsuits for defamation against state institutions and a number of politicians from the governing party in connection with the 2011 Social Consultation. In the course of reorganisation in late 2011 Mr. Jóri was obliged to leave his office, but he continued to pursue all the lawsuits which he had initiated; in addition to Mr. Navracsics, the defendants in these were Péter Szijjártó (then spokesman for the Prime Minister), the Ministry of Justice, the Department of Public Administration and Electronic Services (KEK KH), the Hungarian National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (the new data protection authority from January 2012), and its leader Attila Péterfalvi.
Leading up to these lawsuits, in the summer of 2011 a heated debate developed between certain representatives of the governing party and the Commissioner – partly in public, and partly within Parliament. The question at issue was whether there was any substantive dialogue or discussion on the Social Consultation questionnaires between the Commissioner and KEK KH, the state office responsible for the initiative.

In his lawsuit against the Minister, Mr. Jóri claimed that in Parliament Mr. Navracsics had said that he, as Commissioner for Data Protection, had not expressed disagreement with the prevailing practices for data management in a single meeting that he had attended, ‘right up until the time that he realised that the position of Commissioner for Data Protection would be abolished under the new Fundamental Law and new legislation, to be replaced by an authority. Since then he has waged a bitter war against all types of legislation related to data protection which this government has enacted [...] There are cases of people basing their standpoints on career considerations, and also of those whose failed personal career has transformed their entire world-view – but in such cases their views should not be interpreted as expert opinion with long-term relevance.’

The courts which heard the case, however, ruled that the Minister's assertions related to data management were factually correct, and that the statements related to the character of the Commissioner for Data Protection were an expression of opinion of the type which those in public life may reasonably be expected to tolerate.

In relation to the Social Consultation carried out in summer 2011, the Commissioner for Data Protection issued a highly critical statement in which he ordered the deletion of personal data appearing on consultation questionnaires on the grounds of unlawful data handling, and ruled that the questionnaires and the statement accompanying them violated the provisions of the Data Protection Act. According to his statement, statutory guarantees were not honoured – for example the requirement for complete anonymity, as well as the prohibition on linking people’s opinions with details of their names and addresses. In relation to this, public administrative legal proceedings were initiated in 2012, but they were dropped after the departure of Mr. Jóri from his post. Last autumn another lawsuit brought by Mr. Jóri against Minster of State Péter Szijjártó was rejected by the court of first instance.
In autumn 2008 Parliament elected András Jóri Commissioner for Data Protection, at the nomination of President of the Republic László Sólyom.

(MTI)