In several respects, the prime minister is doing precisely the opposite of what the law professor Tamas Sarkozy recommended. The commissioner called for the role of the administrative state secretary (or permanent secretary) to be strengthened and depoliticised. Yet, after a 50 minute plenary debate, MPs abolished the post, which had been created in May 1990 by the first freely elected parliament. The administrative state secretaries had always been obliged to run ministries "in accordance with the law and to the highest professional standards." Sarkozy wanted to ensure that political state secretaries could not issue orders to civil servants. Last week's law does not contain this restriction. On the contrary, it makes it possible even for the politically-appointed heads of ministers' private offices to issue orders.

"Government activity is healthy if the technocratic and the political elements are in balance in the structure of government," wrote Sarkozy in the conclusion to his report. To achieve this, the expert wanted to cap the number of appointed political advisers in the ministries at 2 per cent of the staff. This limit has vanished from the new law.

It is only in rare cases that the new law follows Sarkozy's original recommendations. Parliament did indeed cut the number of government agencies radically - from 13 to 4. Thus, the new law leaves only the Central Statistical Office, the State Supervisor of Financial Institutions, the Hungarian Energy Office and the National Communications Office standing as independent national organisations. The new law shortens the period of service of ministerial commissioners, who can now serve for a maximum of six months, compared to six or seven years before. Parliament also layed down that a ministry can now only have one political state secretary and five specialist administrative state secretaries (compared to two and four respectively). Parliament took Sarkozy's advice in making it impossible for the prime minister to hand out state secretary grants to lower-ranking officials. But the law has created a tabula rasa at the heart of government. It got rid of not just the administrative state secretaries, but also suspended all existing deputy state secretaries and government commissioners. Around 100 people are affected.

In his first term, Ferenc Gyurcsany stood at the head of a system of government in which he could distribute the spoils of government (jobs, ranks, extra money) without any limits. At the beginning of his second term, he has created an extraordinarily puritan system of government, but he is also making sure that nobody stands in the upper levels of the hierarchy whom he has not personally approved.

The prime minister is planning a chancellor style of government. For this reason, the government carefully removed any part of Sarkozy's proposals that created the possibility of a system of cabinet government. This is interesting, since the 1989 constitution prescribed cabinet government for Hungary in preference to a presidential system. The new law also fails to specify clearly the tasks and responsibilities of each ministry, as Sarkozy suggested it should.

The new Gyucsany government will be the first since 1848 without something called a Ministry of the Interior. The prime minister's message is that he is happy to break even with 150-year-old traditions. The real break with tradition was of course Gyurcsany's position to introduce into his cabinet two people with no formal ministerial rank. It was clearly important to the prime minister that he create the smallest government the third republic has ever seen, with just 13 ministers. In reality, however, the government will have 15 members in practice, maybe even 16.

Gyurcsany has created precisely as many strategic positions next to the prime ministership - three - as he is allowed to under the new law. The State Reform Committee, which has the task of leading the rebuilding of the public administration system, and the National Development Agency, will be run by Tibor Draskovics, the prime minister's right hand and former finance minister, and by Gordon Bajnai, who has come from the world of business. The two new institutions signal that in questions of strategic importance the parliament's role wil be to rubber-stamp decisions that have already been taken.

The humbling of ministerial rank also reflects the fact that the new law also lacks a passage introduced by the Horn government in 1997, which emphasises the independence and responsibility of members of the government. Ministerial autonomy will be further constrained by the new Government Service Centre, led by Gabor Szetey, another new arrival from the business world. Ministers' activities will from now on be monitored by this new institution, which reports only to the prime minister.

ENDRE BABUS