Sulyok announced that he would countersign the constitutional amendments and thus enable them to come into force.Image: keystone
Jul 19, 2026, 4:47 amJul 19, 2026, 4:47 am
After days of hesitation, Hungary’s President Tamas Sulyok, a political friend of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who was voted out in April, is clearing the way for a constitutional amendment that also includes his own removal.
Sulyok announced that he would countersign these constitutional amendments and thus enable them to come into force. After the parliamentary decision to amend the constitution last Monday, the new Prime Minister Peter Magyar gave the head of state a five-day deadline to countersign and threatened him with removal from office if he refused.
Until a new head of state is elected, Parliament President Agnes Forsthoffer takes over his powers. There are now 30 days left for this. In Hungary, the head of state is elected by parliament.
Magyar confirmed that Sulyok had countersigned the constitutional changes and that his post would therefore be vacant as of next Monday. Constitutional changes could now come into force that would enable far-reaching political reforms. “With these decisions, we are giving something back to the Hungarian people that the Orban regime has been trying to take away for many years: the certainty that power is limited, common property is regained and the state can once again serve its citizens, the free Hungarian citizens,” Magyar wrote on Facebook.
Sulyok admits that he cannot do anything about his removal
Sulyok emphasized that the parliamentary decision to remove him was unconstitutional, but that he saw no legal options to take action against it. Experts had previously explained that the Constitutional Court should have objected to this parliamentary decision at best because of formalities, but not its content. In a speech shared on Facebook, Sulyok also complained that every head of state in Hungary was now “at the mercy of the executive and politics” and no longer had “any control function.”
New limits for mandates of constitutional judges and members of parliament
Magyar had accused Sulyok, who has been in office since 2024, of supporting Orban’s policies. The constitutional amendment also stipulates that the offices of constitutional judges end automatically when they reach the age of 70. This currently affects four of the 15 constitutional judges, including chairman Peter Polt, who is considered an Orban loyalist. Furthermore, this constitutional amendment decided that the term of office of MPs will be limited to twelve years from 2030. It would, for example, prohibit Orban from running for parliament again. He has been a member of parliament continuously from 1990 until now. However, he did not take up the mandate that he won as the top candidate of his Fidesz party in the election in April of this year. Furthermore, an office for the recovery of state assets is to be created.
Magyar and his Tisza party are also planning to draw up a completely new constitution that will replace the “Basic Law” that was only implemented by Orban in 2011. He accused Orban of tailoring this piece of legislation entirely to his party’s needs for power. (sda/dpa)