In future, all contracts officially prepared by lawyers would include a time-stamped sticker, making undated contracts concluded earlier, including illegal, so-called „pocket contracts” useless, Chairman of the Hungarian Bar Association János Bánáti said at the meeting of the inter-ministerial committee set up to examine the issue of illegal contracts, explaining the organisation’s proposal.

The Ministry of Rural Development’s Parliamentary State Secretary, Gyula Budai, spoke to kormany.hu about the issue.

The Ministry of Public Administration and Justice has accepted the Bar Association’s proposal, Minister of State Róbert Répássy announced. With reference to „pocket contracts”, Parliamentary State Secretary Gyula Budai form the Ministry of Rural Development expressed his hope that from 1 May 2014 it would be impossible to purchase land in Hungary for purposes of speculation and that only locally resident farmers will be able to acquire farmland.

The formulation of the solution began when Fidesz MP István Nagy submitted a proposal for legislation to parliament that was aimed at curtailing the possibility of getting around the regulations on the acquisition of farmland.

As János Bánáti explained, one of these regulations would have waived attorney-client confidentiality in relation to illegal contracts, something that the Bar Association was strongly against. As another option, they suggested that contracts concluded after the new legislation has come into force should include a sticker, the date of application of which would be registered in a central databank, meaning it would be time-stamped. In view of the fact that illegal contracts often fail to include the date they would become useless, and it would also become impossible to date such contracts retroactively.

As an analogy, János Bánáti mentioned how the so-called property mafia had been successfully quelled by making it compulsory for a lawyer to countersign property purchase agreements.

Róbert Répássy called the solution that has won the support of his Ministry a certifying, numbered security sticker, adding that it reinforced public trust in legal contracts. The Minister of State didn’t rule out the possibility that the sticker could at some point be made compulsory for all contracts.

On another topic, the Minister of State also mentioned that there are moves to amend the Act on Criminal Procedure to also allow witnesses to have a legal representative, a possibility that was removed from the legislation in 2011.