Here is the full judgment: the first-instance court ruled in favor of Átlátszó on all points against the Sovereignty Protection Office

On 4 December 2025, the Budapest-Capital Regional Court delivered its judgment in the personality rights lawsuit brought by Átlátszó against the Sovereignty Protection Office. The first-instance proceedings concluded with Átlátszó’s complete success: the court granted all of our claims and held that, in every material respect, the Office had made false statements in its communications about us.

The Office was prohibited from committing any further infringements – hopefully, the administrators of the Office’s Facebook profile will also be informed of this obligation once the judgement becomes final. In addition, the court ordered the Office to acknowledge the falsity of its allegations and apologize in the form of a Facebook video – the same format as was used to communicate false statements about Átlátszó. The court further ordered the Office to publish a notice on its homepage stating in clear terms that its statements were false. Finally, the court ordered the Office to pay Átlátszó HUF 3,800,000 in non-pecuniary damages for the violation of our personality rights.

In the following, we will present how the Office attempted to achieve the termination of the proceedings, as well as the court’s reasoning as to why it has found that the statements about Átlátszó – which, in the Office’s words before the court, were merely „investigative conclusions”, having the same legal quality as opinions, in clear opposition to the president of the Office, Tamás Lánczi, who insisted on them being facts (the Office however later stated that, alas, he is not a lawyer)  – were untrue.

The Office’s jurisdictional challenge: no court shall oversee the veracity of its statements

The Office’s defence was primarily aimed at having the court terminate the proceedings initiated by Átlátszó, arguing that the act establishing the Office explicitly states that no legal remedy is available against its reports. According to the Office,

„the Budapest-Capital Regional Court is therefore not entitled to influence the defendant Office in the performance of its duties, either directly or indirectly, nor to review the findings of its report and analysis in terms of content and/or legality.”.

Accepting this argument would lead to nothing less than the existence of a public authority (operating, according to its 2026 budget allocation, on an annual budget of HUF 6 billion 902 million) whose sole function would be to make statements about individuals and organisations under its investigations that cannot be challenged or contested before any forum. The truthfulness or even the legality of these findings, it is argued, is not a matter for the court.

The absurdity of such a situation should be evident even in illiberal democracies.

Consequently, the court did not agree with the Office’s argument: in line with our reasoning, it pointed out that, despite the statutory provision stating that no ordinary legal remedy is available against the Office’s report, even the Constitutional Court’s interpretation^[1] confirms that the Office may be sued and that the veracity of its statements may be examined in ordinary civil proceedings.

Átlátszó vs Szuverenitásvédelmi Hivatal elsőfokú ítélet by atlatszo

Sovereignty Protection Office, as a Champion of Freedom of Expression

In our statement of claim, we argued that under European and Hungarian constitutional standards, the state — and its individual bodies, such as the Office — may only be bound by fundamental rights, but they can never be their beneficiaries. This is because freedom of expression is itself a fundamental right, and it is precisely the duty of the state to respect the exercise of that right by private individuals and their organisations, to ensure the conditions for its exercise, and to refrain from unnecessary interference with it. The state itself, however, cannot claim that it was merely exercising its own freedom of expression in its communications and thereby avoid having to prove the veracity of its statements, or avoid doing so beyond reasonable doubt — especially when those statements concern private individuals or their organisations.

The Office, by contrast, argued that its statements about Átlátszó

„are, by their nature, a form of opinion based on facts and therefore enjoy the protection of freedom of expression.”.

The court, however, ruled in our favour. In its reasoning, it stated that

„The court agreed with the plaintiff’s position that the considerations set out in the Curia’s review judgment^[2] are also applicable to the content complained of in the present proceedings, since the defendant

• likewise acted as part of state authority — and thus as a duty-bearer of fundamental rights — in the video challenged in these proceedings, as well as in the report on which the video was based;
• consequently, as a public authority, was not entitled in the first place to exercise freedom of expression as a constitutional fundamental right;
• instead, it was bound by the obligation to provide truthful information and to respect personality rights that genuinely enjoy fundamental-rights protection.”.

Thus, the Office could not claim that, in its official communications, it was merely exercising its freedom of expression in the same way as a newspaper’s editorial board. Accordingly, the Office was not merely required to demonstrate that its statements had a „thin factual basis”; it had to prove the actual veracity of its findings instead. The court pointed out, in line with our arguments, that

„as a body established by law to operate independently and free from political influence, and by virtue of its constitutional status to act in a party-neutral manner — is subject to an even stricter standard with regard to its reports and other communications. What is more, the defendant is under a statutory obligation to provide factual reporting and information.”.

Consequently, the Office found itself in the unfortunate position of having to prove the veracity of its statements. The outcome of the evidentiary process is publicly available: according to the court’s findings,

„the report prepared by the Office, as well as the testimony of the witness who prepared it, was not capable of proving the veracity of the statements made in the proceedings.”.

In the following, we explain why the court concluded that the Office’s allegations were untrue.

The Office falsely claimed that „Átlátszó’s activities constitute intelligence operations and disinformation, and that its work seriously violates Hungary’s sovereignty”

The court has found that:

„[i]ntelligence operations refer to the secret collection of information aimed at obtaining an adversary’s military, economic, or political secrets, constituting organised intelligence service activity (…) and also constituting the actus reus of the crime of espionage under Section 261 of the Criminal Code.”. Regarding disinformation, the court noted: „[i]ntentionally misleading, manipulative, and distorted information on important public issues, which does not correspond to the truth and affects the lives of many people, has its own designation —that is, disinformation.”. 

Concerning this statement, the Office – in lieu of providing evidence – claimed, that Átlátszó

„as a member of a foreign-affiliated political influence network, produces and publishes articles and video content, and participates in formal and informal consultations, professional forums, etc. The narratives presented by the plaintiff (Átlátszó) fit into a strategy determined by the interests of the foreign network (for example, introducing various false narratives about corruption into Hungarian political discourse). Accordingly, this qualifies as disinformation activity — that is, the manipulative distortion of information and of facts for political purposes.”.

This „investigative conclusion”, however, was insufficient to substantiate the claims that Átlátszó was spying, spreading disinformation, or that its activities seriously violated Hungary’s sovereignty. The court pointed out:

„[t]he mere assertion by the defendant that the plaintiff is affiliated with an international network, and that its unspecified ‘agendas’ correspond to the network’s political narratives, is insufficient to establish as fact that the plaintiff engages in disinformation or intelligence activities. Filing requests for data of public interest constitutes a lawful exercise of one of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Basic Law. The defendant has failed to provide any evidence substantiating the conduct of disinformation activities and has not cited a single instance in which the plaintiff disseminated false information.”.

The Office falsely claimed that „Átlátszó’s disinformation campaign provided »Brussels«  with a pretext to blackmail Hungary by withholding EU funds”

In line with the above, the Office was unable to identify a single instance in which Átlátszó had published false information — and consequently it could not have conducted a disinformation campaign. Regarding this statement, the court held that the Office

„[f]alsely claimed that the plaintiff (Átlátszó)’s disinformation campaign provided a pretext for »Brussels«  to blackmail Hungary by withholding EU funds.”.

Moreover, since Átlátszó „has not engaged in any disinformation activity, including any campaign, it cannot serve as a pretext for blackmail by »Brussels«  or anyone else.”.

The Office falsely stated that „Átlátszó was secretive and refused to disclose the partial reports it provided in relation to the Sargentini Report”

In the proceedings, we submitted that we did not participate in the preparation of the Sargentini Report and did not submit any partial reports in connection with it. The Report merely cites Átlátszó’s articles as sources, in the same way as it refers to materials from ELTE’s Faculty of Law, the University of Pécs, or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We emphasized that the Office accuses us of concealing a document from a public authority, which, on the one hand, was never requested from us, and on the other hand, does not exist.

According to the court’s findings, the Office

„[f]ailed to discharge its burden of proof. Since a negative fact cannot be proven, it was in the defendant’s interest to prove that the partial report allegedly concealed by the plaintiff actually exists. The sentence in the Sargentini Report stating that »[i]n the course of preparing the report, until its adoption by the committee, the rapporteur received contributions from the following organisations or individuals« is not sufficient to prove that the plaintiff prepared a partial report. The same sentence may be applied to the use of other materials prepared by the plaintiff. Accordingly, it does not, per se, in any way substantiate either the existence of a partial report or its alleged concealment.”.

In other words, the Office was unable to prove even that the partial report it had referred to existed at all — let alone that Átlátszó had concealed it.

The Office falsely claimed that „Átlátszó’s funding was predominantly foreign, with most of the money coming from the European Commission, foreign states, and George Soros’s financial circles”

In this regard we explained that contrary to the now classic allegation – also put forward by the Office and which was declared by the court, with final and binding force, to be false^[3] — the reality is that the most significant part of Átlátszó’s annual budget derives from the 1% personal income tax donations of private individuals and from small contributions, just as this can be found in our publicly accessible reports and supplementary annexes, which were also attached in the proceedings.

The court held that the Office

„did not even attempt to prove the truth of its claim.”.

The Office – (again) instead of providing evidence – argued, that

„for a significant part of Hungarian society, and therefore according to public opinion, it is not considered a negative or sovereignty-threatening circumstance that a Hungarian civil or nonprofit organization’s funding is predominantly of foreign origin, or that most of its funding comes, alongside the European Commission, from foreign states and the organizations of George Soros. Indeed, this is so widely accepted that not only is it not condemned, but it is even considered desirable, and people may organize demonstrations or other actions if the government pursues contrary objectives. (…) Therefore, public opinion is not uniform on this matter, and on that basis it cannot be concluded that the contested statement carries a evidently offensive character. We wish to note that, in the absence of offensiveness, even if the statement were proven untrue, it would not constitute a legal violation, because all three of the aforementioned conditions must be met simultaneously.”.

The court, however, noted that the Office has stated the following about Átlátszó in its Facebook video that was challenged in the proceedings:

„»[i]ts finances are just as obscure. They hide their cash flow behind a complicated and cross-financed structure. Despite these tricks, the Sovereignty Protection Office determined that Átlátszó’s funding is predominantly of foreign origin. Most of the money is provided, alongside the European Commission, by  foreign states and funding networks associated with Soros.«

(…) in this context, the offensive nature of the statement is clearly discernible to the average viewer.”.

The Office falsely claimed that „Átlátszó systematically abuses data of public interest and has so far uploaded over 9,000 Hungarian documents to U.S. servers”

In this context, we pointed out that what the Office refers to as an „American server” is in fact the Aleph collection (URL: https://aleph.occrp.org/pages/about) of the OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project — one of the world’s largest investigative journalism organizations), a project that aggregates information from governmental and other publicly available databases, with the purpose of providing investigative journalists worldwide with data on the flow of (in some cases public) funds. However, we have not uploaded any data to this collection, and we have no influence over what data the OCCRP collects or from where. Moreover, data of public interest is by its nature, freely distributable, and any misuse of it by those accessing it is conceptually impossible.

In this regard, the Office stated in its defence that

„[i]n the event that a state body authorized to conduct an investigation and analysis were to reach an erroneous conclusion regarding the conduct of the entity under review (for example, in relation to its data management), its finding of a violation or misuse would nevertheless not be considered unlawful.”.

However, the court did not concur with the Office’s argument. It pointed out that the Office

„had not proven the veracity [of its statement], and its statement, as set out above, does not qualify as an opinion that could serve as a basis for rejecting this point of the claim.”.

The Office lost the case

The Office, therefore, has failed to prove a single one of its claims. However, the 76-page judgment established that the Office, through its clearly harmful and false statements violated Átlátszó’s good reputation. One can only hope that the „national sovereignty report”, which the Office is required by law to prepare annually, will present all of this adequately.

^[1] Paragraph [83] of the Constitutional Court’s decision of 15 November 2024, no. IV/02551/2024, which ruled on the constitutional complaint lodged against the legislation establishing the Office

^[2] The Curia’s (the supreme court of Hungary) review judgment delivered under no. Pfv.IV.21.348/2018/7, upholding the final judgment of the Budapest Court of Appeal no. 32.Pf.20.380/2018/5-II, concerning certain elements of the national consultations that were found to infringe good reputation.

^[3] The final judgment of the Budapest Court of Appeal no. 2.Pf.20.327/2023/6.

Written and translated by Gergő Pere, the Hungarian version of this story is here. Cover photo: Judge Monika Jakabosné Németh in the courtroom. Photos, video: Gergely Pápai/Átlátszó