Hungary's Parliament passed its 17th constitutional amendment on Monday, July 13, by 139 votes to six in the 199-member chamber, moving to strip President Tamas Sulyok of his office and roll back the machinery Viktor Orban built over 16 years in power [1]. Prime Minister Peter Magyar's Tisza party, holding the two-thirds majority it won in April's landslide, gave a standing ovation. Orban's far-right Fidesz boycotted the session entirely.
The amendment does not remove Sulyok by its own force. He has five days to sign it into law, and has not said whether he will; Tisza has vowed to open an impeachment procedure if he refuses. The document, whose stated purpose is "restoring rule-of-law democracy," would also make judicial changes, create an office to investigate financial abuses under the Orban government, and impose a 12-year term limit on lawmakers.
At a news conference after the vote, Magyar declared that his government had "started the transformation of the Orban legal system." "With this vote today, we have closed an era," he said, pointing to April's result as "a completely clear mandate from the Hungarian people." Sulyok, an Orban-era appointee, has resisted Magyar's calls to resign since the spring.
Magyar's own tense casts the vote as a finished act: the old regime over, the mandate spent. The mechanics say otherwise. A ceremonial president who still signs legislation and can refer bills to the Constitutional Court retains real power to stall. Until Sulyok signs or is impeached, the "closed era" is a parliamentary vote, not an accomplished removal.
The stakes are concrete. Fidesz caucus leader Gergely Gulyas called the amendment a measure that "breaks up the legal system, undermines the rule of law and restricts democracy," then announced his own resignation as caucus leader, since the new 12-year term limit would bar him from the next Parliament. Fidesz has branded the changes an "unprecedented" assault on democratic order; last week it staged a protest that drew roughly 3,000 people, though Orban did not attend, and it called for a candlelight vigil outside Parliament on Monday evening. Orban himself, en route to the United States for the World Cup final matches, posted a photograph of Magyar on Facebook captioned "Democratic Hungary: 1990-2026."
The vote is not the government's first move against the old apparatus. Since taking office in May, Magyar's cabinet has removed political appointees and institution heads, suspended the news service of Hungary's public television and radio -- which he calls Orban's "propaganda factory" -- and shuttered the Sovereignty Protection Office, an authority his allies saw as a tool for intimidating critics. What remains untested is whether the amendment survives Sulyok's desk and the Constitutional Court he could still invoke.
-- CHARLES ASHFORD, London