Abstract
The historic first meeting of the National Public Administration Science Conference (hereinafter: OKTT) took place on 18-19 November 2021 in Sárvár, Hungary. The OKTT was organised by the Széchenyi István University and the Central and Eastern European Association for Public Administration (hereinafter referred to as the KTE) within the framework of the research programme on legal issues of the sub-project of the Digital Development Centre of the Széchenyi István University as well as the Digital Success Programme.
The objective of the event was to enable the faculties of Hungarian faculties of law and the administrative law departments of the University of Public Service to learn about each other’s teaching experiences, challenges and research fields, and – together with the relevant organisations – present and explore the most current issues, problems and topics of public administration employing a scientific and theoretical approach. In line with this objective, all the faculties of law in Hungary and the Department of Administrative Law of the University of Public Service were represented at the OKTT.
On the first day of the two-day event, after András Lapsánszky’s opening speech, the heads of the administrative law departments presented the research and teaching activities of their educators and the textbooks they use for teaching. The difficulties caused by the pandemic, the challenges of online education and its need in the future were discussed as well. The conference attendees also addressed generational challenges, including that today’s university students have different educational needs compared to previous years, to which administrative law departments need to respond. There was an extensive discussion about the career paths of teachers and researchers, especially their publication requirements. Attendees noted that, partly as a result of the transfer of universities to foundations, it is becoming increasingly important to publish in journals ranked high by Scopus and other international standards. One of the related issues raised in the discussion was that these international standards are primarily tailored to technical disciplines and fail to take into account that the achievements in jurisprudence are more country-specific. The question, therefore, was raised as to what role the list of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences journal should play in the process. Speakers listed examples from several neighbouring countries, which confirmed the need for a different set of criteria on jurisprudence and a separate list of journals in Hungary. The conference attendees finally agreed that they would advocate at the decision-making forums of their respective universities that a different standard of academic advancement should be applied to jurisprudence.
Several department heads noted succession training being an issue, as they see a drop in the number of students enrolled in doctoral programmes that would guarantee the smooth functioning of administrative law departments in the long term. Gábor Papp, Senior Associate and Head of Professional Development at DLA Piper, summarized the expectations related to the education of administrative law and highlighted the importance of critical analytical thinking from a legal practice perspective. Next, attendees were given a brief insight into the operation and public law research of the Ferenc Mádl Institute by Prof. Dr. Zoltán Nagy.
For the purpose of post-graduate education, Dr. Levente András Gál, the professional head of the Digital Success Programme, offered a substantial grant to all departments so that they each can support a dedicated PhD student doing outstanding research in their respective research fields.
Conference attendees also agreed that it would be useful to organise the OKTT meeting every year, and that the list of the faculty of each department, their fields of research and the titles of the textbooks used by the respective departments would be published on the OKTT website.
On the second day of the OKTT conference, presentations were delivered on various interesting and current scientific subjects.
Dr András Levente Gál gave a presentation on digital governance and its aspects in public administration. He outlined the organisation and tasks of the Digital Success Programme, as well as its activities in building a digital state government. Mr. Gál highlighted that digitalisation is of key importance for the future of Hungary, as the competitiveness of our country may very well depend on that.
In her presentation titled “Public administration before the court: current issues of respondent’s positions in public administration”, Prof. Dr. Krisztina Füzi-Rozsnyai talked about the provisions of Act I of 2017 on the Code of Administrative Court Procedure concerning the respondent and the practice developed in relation to them, with special regard to the regulation on the defence statement.
Prof. Dr. András Patyi presented the practice of the Curia in relation to the appeal procedure by means of case law. The main question in his presentation was whether the decisions of the Curia have set a limited system of judicial precedent. He cited a number of statistics to support his scientific findings in the context of the case-law complaint procedure.
Dr. Rita Gyurita presented the evolution of the integration of territorial public administration after 2010. She assessed the changes of the last decade, outlining their advantages and disadvantages. Dr. Gyurita noted that the mergers of territorial administrations in several stages have led to a number of changes in organisation, tasks and competences, which are expected to continue in the future.
Prof. Dr. Gyula Bándi spoke about the rights of future generations. He covered a range of issues that will affect not only future generations but also those living today (e.g. climate change, the use of fossil and renewable energy sources). One of the questions raised was what the law, and within it public administration, can do for future generations.
Dr. Gyula Csáki-Hatalovics used a theoretical approach to address the challenges of the digital world in public administration. He explained that public administration must keep up with the achievements of information technology and integrate them into its operations accordingly to increase efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Next on the programme would have been a lecture by Prof. Dr. András Torma and Dr. Evelin Ritó, who unfortunately could not attend the event, but shared the slides of their lecture titled “The EU institutional system and its functioning in the 21st century from a Hungarian public law perspective”.
The last speaker was Dr. Gábor Hulkó, who spoke about KTE, its management, activities, publications and goals. The international relations of the KTE in the Visegrád countries were specifically highlighted. Several participants noted that it would be worthwhile for KTE to open up to Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia.
After the presentations, the General Assembly of the KTE was held, during which the management of the association presented the financial situation of the KTE, as well as the organisation’s professional achievements and future plans.