The political transition in Hungary has moved from electoral confrontation to institutional mechanics. Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s decision to amend the Fundamental Law to remove President Tamás Sulyok demonstrates the structural challenges of dismantling an entrenched, illiberal state architecture. When a newly elected government secures a parliamentary supermajority but inherits a state apparatus staffed entirely by loyalists of the previous regime, the primary bottleneck to governance is no longer legislative consensus, but institutional friction.
The current impasse in Budapest provides a textbook study of legal asymmetry. Magyar’s Tisza party commands the two-thirds parliamentary majority required to alter the constitution, yet Sulyok retains executive veto powers that can delay or derail the legislative agenda. By choosing a targeted constitutional amendment over traditional impeachment tracks, the Magyar administration is attempting to bypass a structurally compromised judiciary. This strategy highlights a universal operational challenge in democratic restoration: when the constitutional rules of a state have been optimized for regime survival, institutional alignment cannot be achieved through normal statutory channels.
The Dual-Track Veto System
To assess the operational necessity of Magyar’s strategy, one must analyze the formal mechanisms by which a hostile Hungarian president can disrupt a reformist parliamentary majority. While the presidency in Hungary is primarily ceremonial, the office acts as a critical institutional gatekeeper through a dual-track review process.
- The Political Veto: Under the Fundamental Law, the president can refuse to sign a bill passed by parliament and return it for reconsideration. This is a temporary friction mechanism; if parliament repasses the bill with an absolute majority, the president is constitutionally obligated to sign it within five days, unless they trigger the second, more severe track.
- The Constitutional Veto: Before signing a bill, the president can refer it to the Constitutional Court for an asymmetric review of its compatibility with the Fundamental Law. This track halts the legislative process indefinitely while the court deliberates.
This creates a critical operational vulnerability for the Tisza party. The Constitutional Court remains entirely packed with appointees selected during the sixteen-year tenure of former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Consequently, any legislative attempt by Magyar to implement structural reforms—such as empowering the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) or reversing illiberal administrative laws—can be effectively frozen by a coordinated effort between the Sándor Palace and the Constitutional Court.
The Strategic Failure Mode of Standard Impeachment
A standard legal reading suggests that Magyar should utilize existing constitutional removal procedures rather than rewriting the Fundamental Law. Article 13 of the Hungarian Constitution provides a mechanism for removing a sitting president if they intentionally violate the constitution or commit a criminal offense. This path requires a two-thirds vote in parliament to initiate impeachment proceedings.
However, a structural breakdown reveals that this path is a strategic failure mode. Under the current framework, the initiation of impeachment by parliament does not remove the president; instead, it shifts the adjudicating authority entirely to the Constitutional Court. Because the court’s bench is politically aligned with the displaced Fidesz regime, an impeachment attempt would inevitably terminate in a dismissal of charges.
This creates a constitutional loop. A reformist parliament seeking to purge illiberal appointees must rely on an institution staffed by those very same appointees to validate the removal. By selecting the alternative track—using its two-thirds supermajority to amend the Fundamental Law directly to alter the presidential mandate or terms of removal—the Magyar government aims to break this circle by exercising raw constituent power, bypassing judicial adjudication entirely.
Executive Inaction as an Operational Bottleneck
The confrontation reached a critical inflection point following the expiration of Magyar's May 31 ultimatum demanding Sulyok's resignation. Sulyok’s subsequent refusal, alongside his appeals to the Venice Commission for external legal protection, underscores a fundamental disagreement regarding the functional role of the head of state during a transition of power.
Magyar’s operational critique of Sulyok targets deliberate executive omission. In a constitutional system, passive compliance can be as effective an obstruction strategy as an active veto. The administration’s case against Sulyok identifies several systemic instances where the presidency chose institutional silence over constitutional oversight:
- The Pardon Scandal Review: The failure to initiate comprehensive institutional audits following the high-profile abuse of executive clemency that destabilized the previous administration.
- Civil Society Stigmatization: The refusal to challenge the funding mechanisms and targeting practices of the Sovereignty Protection Authority.
- Surveillance Oversight Failure: Total executive passivity regarding documented secret service monitoring of opposition political figures and civil activists.
When the head of state treats systemic abuses of state power as politically irrelevant, the presidency ceases to function as a neutral arbiter and becomes an active shield for the previous regime’s infrastructure. Sulyok’s defense—that calls for his resignation are politically motivated and that he will continue to sign targeted legislation necessary to unblock €16 billion in frozen European Union funds—fails to address the core issue. The Magyar administration is not seeking a cooperative rubber stamp for economic survival; it is seeking the wholesale neutralization of a veto player capable of blocking long-term structural de-autocratization.
The Risks of Democratic Constitutional Retaliation
While the tactical logic of Magyar’s constitutional amendment is sound, the strategy carries significant institutional risks and structural limitations that a rigorous analysis must account for.
First, amending a constitution to remove a specific individual, even when framed as a systemic realignment, sets an unstable precedent for democratic continuity. This is known in legal theory as "measure-legislation"—laws written to target specific persons rather than to establish general, abstract rules. Sulyok’s appeal to the Venice Commission will leverage this vulnerability, arguing that using a parliamentary supermajority to shorten the mandate of an independent official undermines the very principle of the rule of law that Magyar claims to restore.
Second, the planned one-month timeline to pass the amendment creates a dangerous window of vulnerability. During this legislative period, the existing institutional veto players remain fully operational. Sulyok and the Constitutional Court could preemptively challenge or delay the amendment itself, or fast-track defensive judicial rulings designed to immunize other deep-state appointees—such as Chief Justice Péter Polt or the leadership of the State Audit Office—from future legislative removal.
Finally, the assumption that the Speaker of Parliament can seamlessly assume presidential duties and countersign legislation upon Sulyok’s removal assumes complete institutional compliance. If the transition causes broader administrative friction within the parliamentary bureaucracy, it could disrupt the precise legislative sequencing required to unlock EU funds, temporarily worsening the country's macroeconomic vulnerabilities.
The Direct Election Vector
To insulate the presidency from future accusations of partisan packing and to build long-term institutional legitimacy, the Magyar government's optimal move is to couple the removal of Sulyok with a structural shift toward the direct popular election of the president.
Transitioning Hungary from an indirect parliamentary selection process to a direct democratic mandate fundamentally alters the political calculus. A directly elected president would derive authority directly from the electorate, breaking the institutional dependence on parliamentary party machinations that characterized the Orbán era. This move would strip the Fidesz opposition of its primary rhetorical weapon; they could no longer credibly frame the removal of Sulyok as a partisan power grab if his successor is chosen directly by millions of citizens. Furthermore, a direct election provides the Magyar administration with an immediate, undeniable public mandate to continue dismantling the parallel state structures embedded throughout the judiciary, media regulators, and financial oversight bodies.
The legislative text of the upcoming constitutional amendment must therefore avoid specific references to Sulyok. Instead, it must redefine the eligibility, tenure, and removal thresholds for the presidential office universally, while establishing a clear transitional framework that transfers temporary signing authority to the Speaker of the House pending an immediate national vote. This approach transforms a high-risk political purge into a systemic, legitimate upgrade of Hungary's democratic architecture.
