LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Here in Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has chipped away at the institutions that make a democracy healthy. One of these institutions, crucial to any functioning democracy, is the judiciary. Orban and his ruling party have, over the past 15 years, stacked Hungary's courts with loyalists, reduced judges' pay, and limited their freedom of expression. We now bring in NPR's Central Europe correspondent Rob Schmitz, who has been covering Hungary's democratic backsliding for years. Good morning, Rob.
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: Morning, Leila.
FADEL: So on your last visit to Hungary, just before we got here, you spent some time with a judge who saw firsthand how Orban's government stripped the independence from the courts. Why don't you tell us about her?
SCHMITZ: Yeah. Her name is Adrienn Laczo, and she's 51 years old. She worked as a criminal judge in Budapest for 24 years. She told me the first changes Orban made to the judiciary were in 2011, when his government suddenly changed the retirement age for all judges. As Laczo told me in our interview in a local cafe, the government changed the retirement age for judges from 70 to 62 years old.
ADRIENN LACZO: So this meant that all judges between 62 and 70, it was about 300 judges, and they were sent into retirement. And obviously, they were the senior judges.
SCHMITZ: And, Leila, as Laczo pointed out, the judges in this group, in this cohort, were among Hungary's most experienced and knowledgeable judges, and forcing 300 of them to retire was a shock to the judicial system because it represented more than 10% of all judges in the country.
FADEL: I mean, 10%. That's a lot. Who replaced this huge number?
SCHMITZ: Well, mostly younger, less experienced judges who, Laczo says, were more loyal to Orban's ruling party. And Laczo says she saw these judges rise through the system faster than anyone else in the judiciary.
LACZO: There are several judges now at the Curia, which is our Supreme Court, who have very little experience, like 1 1/2 years as a judge or even less. At the administrative department, there is a judge who used to work for the Ministry of Justice as a state secretary, and from the ministry, he landed directly at the Supreme Court.
FADEL: So getting these inexperienced judges into place, was this just about getting rid of judges with experience to pave the way for specific policies he wanted to implement?
SCHMITZ: Right. Yeah, it was basically putting people on the bench who would be loyal to Orban. And, you know, within this short period of time, according to Laczo, suddenly, you know, the most powerful judges in Hungary were these inexperienced political appointees, and they were now all in the position to do Orban's bidding.
FADEL: But, Rob, how was any of this legal?
SCHMITZ: Well, it actually wasn't. Legal scholars say it violated Hungary's own Constitution. Two years later, the European Court of Justice ruled that Orban had also violated European Union law by doing this. The court forced Hungary to reinstate the judges. Orban's government responded, though, by reestablishing the retirement age to 65, which is in line with the general retirement age throughout the country. But Laczo says the damage to the judiciary was already done because the vacated judges were not given their old posts back. These positions had already been taken by Orban loyalists.
Later on, as Orban consolidated more power, his government went even further. It created a special office, run by a political appointee, responsible for appointing new judges. And then in 2019, it created an entirely new administrative court system that tries cases regarding human rights, elections, asylum cases, and it put that under the executive branch so that Orban could oversee all of it.
FADEL: So what does this mean for judges like Laczo?
SCHMITZ: So for Laczo, it meant that she felt she really couldn't live with herself by working in what she saw was an increasingly corrupted system serving a single leader. She struggled for years deciding what she should do.
LACZO: All the steps that narrow down the possibilities of being honest and working honestly as a judge were huger and huger, and the pressure over judiciary is increasing by the minute. And after a while, I felt that I can't go on with it.
SCHMITZ: And, Leila, last November, Adrienn Laczo resigned from the bench. She's now working as a lawyer, and she's trying to raise awareness about the damage that Viktor Orban has done to the country's judicial system.
FADEL: That's NPR's Central Europe correspondent Rob Schmitz. Thank you, Rob.
SCHMITZ: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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