Throughout the 16 years of former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s second premiership, which lasted from 2010 until his Fidesz Party’s devastating defeat in April, liberals on both sides of the Atlantic derided his government as “authoritarian” and even “autocratic.” In the end, however, it proved neither “authoritarian” nor “autocratic” enough to avoid losing, in what were universally recognized free elections, to the opposition Tisza Party. Tisza, which was formed and led by Orbán’s former acolyte Péter Magyar, ran on an anti-corruption platform and captured a supermajority large enough to change Hungary’s constitution.
The left was ecstatic to see the world’s flagship national conservative government fall, but recent developments have begun to make Orbán’s international critics think twice. For one thing, upon Magyar’s assumption of office on May 9, he demanded the resignation of Hungary’s constitutionally elected president Tamás Sulyok. Sulyok was an Orbán ally and as president, he had the power to veto parliamentary legislation. Magyar also asked for the resignations of several appointed judicial officials. Tisza, Magyar’s party, has abolished government agencies that promoted Fidesz civil society initiatives and it established government conservatorship over NGOs and educational institutions perceived as being too closely affiliated with people sympathetic to Fidesz.
Magyar’s government has taken decisive steps to prevent Orbán personally from ever returning to power. In June, Tisza passed term limits barring any individual from serving as Hungary’s prime minister for more than a lifetime total of eight years. The legislation is retroactive to 1990, the first complete year after Hungary emerged from communism, and applies only to Orbán, the sole person in the country who has exceeded the newly imposed maximum.
Magyar’s supermajority is only getting bolder. On July 13, it passed a constitutional amendment, part of a reform the new prime minister calls “Operation Purgatory Fire,” to remove Sulyok from Hungary’s presidency, as well as Hungary’s constitutional court president and three other judges serving on that body. The amendment also limits all members of parliament to serving a maximum of three four-year terms. This measure, which is also retroactive, will indefinitely bar more than half of Fidesz’s remaining deputies from standing for reelection. Tisza’s deputies, all of whom were just elected for the first time, have another 12 years before the term-limiting legislation applies to them. No wonder the government block greeted the winning vote with a standing ovation.
Critics have argued that removing Sulyok in this way would violate the rule of law. Magyar dismissed such concerns, deriding the president and other Fidesz-aligned officials as “puppets” of “the political and economic mafia that has ruled our country for the past 16 years”—suggesting that Fidesz officials were unworthy of legal niceties. According to the letter of the amendment, the constitutional court jurists are being retired because they are over the age of 70, but all four of the ones affected are allegedly aligned with Orbán. Notably, in 2011 Orbán introduced a similar age limit on Hungary’s constitutional court judges but backed down after the European Union’s Court of Justice ruled the move unlawful.
EU institutions, in contrast, have offered no criticism of Magyar’s unfolding reforms. To the contrary, on the day parliament passed the new amendment, the European Commission approved a $2.3 billion cash infusion to Hungary’s government-owned national development bank as a reward for improving on Orbán-era governance issues. On July 10, the previous business day before the amendment vote, the EU unfroze an even larger $11.5 billion package of grants and loans long withheld from Orbán that was originally meant for post-COVID pandemic recovery.
Under Hungary’s constitution, the recent amendment could not be adopted without Sulyok’s signature, effectively requiring him to consent to his own removal from office. Fidesz leaders had the option to refer the amendment to the constitutional court, which could have reviewed it for possible procedural laws, but Magyar argued that passing the amendment alone is sufficient to make it legal and threatened to bring impeachment proceedings against Sulyok if he refused to sign it.
On July 18, Sulyok, who described the amendment in a somber video posted to X as “unconstitutional,” a “grave and shameful example of abuse of power,” and a “serious blow” to the rule of law, signed it to avoid a political crisis. The Tisza speaker of parliament will now replace him. Orbán took to X to declare that “today, the final barrier fell. Arbitrary rule is no longer a looming threat; it is a reality. If they can do this to the President of the Republic, they can do it to anyone.”
Orbán may well be right, since Tisza’s parliamentary supermajority can alter any aspect of national law, and now can do so with little or no prospect of a presidential veto. International leaders, particularly EU officials who spent more than a decade and a half excoriating Orbán, have yet to say anything critical of Hungary’s apparent democratic backslide under Magyar. But some cracks may be forming in the united front against him. In June, Human Rights Watch, a longtime Orbán critic, issued a report arguing that Magyar’s “rushed constitutional changes undermine the rule of law.” In response to the amendment’s passing on July 13, Amnesty International, one of Orbán’s harshest critics, stated on social media that “we think the government’s current solution is not okay” because it “ignores the fact that Tamás Sulyok has the right to fair proceedings” that observe “appropriate legal guarantees.”
In April, Hungarians voted decisively for change and were motivated above all by an animus against perceived corruption. But if Magyar continues to act in fact the way his old boss was only accused of acting, they may regret their choice.