He graduated in 1980 from the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of Eötvös Loránd University. In 2011 he obtained the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) with the distinction summa cum laude; his doctoral research examined parliamentary immunity as a bar to criminal culpability.

Between 1980 and 1982, he completed his prosecutorial traineeship at the 5^th District Prosecution Office of Budapest and subsequently at Budapest-Capital Chief Prosecution Office. From 1983 onwards he served as a research fellow at the National Institute of Criminology and Criminalistics and simultaneously held full-time academic appointments at several universities, including Eötvös Loránd University, Széchenyi István University, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, and the National University of Public Service. In 1984 he undertook professional training at the Criminal Division (Judicial Panel for Criminal Matters) of the Supreme Court. From 1986 to 1995 he practised as an attorney-at-law, during which period he also worked part-time at the Ministry of Justice, serving as Senior Rapporteur between 1990 and 1991.

Beginning in 1995, he held for a term of five years the office of Deputy to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Civil Rights (the Ombudsman). Subsequently, between 2000 and 2006, he served as Prosecutor General of Hungary. From 2006 to 2010 he acted as Titular Senior Counsellor to the Office of the Prosecutor General and concurrently as Head of the Department for Criminal Court Affairs within that Office. In 2010 he was once again appointed Prosecutor General, a position he continued to hold until his election as Justice of the Constitutional Court, commencing his third term in 2019.

Since 2012 he has been lecturing at the Faculty of Law Enforcement of the National University of Public Service, and from 2015 he has headed the Department of Criminal Law within the Institute of Criminal Sciences. In 2016 he obtained his habilitation at the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences of Pázmány Péter Catholic University, and in 2017 he was appointed Full Professor at the Faculty of Law Enforcement of the National University of Public Service.

He is a member of the Scientific Council of the National Institute of Criminology (OKRI), of the Subcommittee on Penitentiary Law of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Political and Legal Sciences, and of the Doctoral Council for the Discipline of Law within the Doctoral School of Law Enforcement at the National University of Public Service.

His international academic and professional engagements are likewise notable. Since 2014 he has served as Honorary President of the Shanghai European Criminal Law Research Centre of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS) and, from 2016, as Visiting Professor at the same institution Between 2023 and 2024 he was Vice-President of the Network of Prosecutors General or Equivalent Institutions at the Supreme Courts of the Member States of the European Union (the Nadal Network), and he has twice held the presidency of that Network, most recently during 2024–2025.

In recognition of his scholarly and professional achievements, he received the Higher Education Academic Merit Medal in 1981, the Ministerial Commendation For Meritorious Service in 1989, and the Kozma Sándor Award in 2010.

the president

Péter POLT

Péter POLT