Magyar targets Orbán’s legal locks

Péter Magyar is trying to take apart the constitutional machinery Viktor Orbán spent 13 years building around himself. The election has given him the numbers to do it. Tisza holds 141 of Hungary’s 199 parliamentary seats, enough to pass constitutional amendments without needing Orbán’s Fidesz.

That makes the question less about power than restraint. Can a new supermajority dismantle Orbán’s locks without treating the constitution as the prize for winning?

Hungary’s prime minister submitted a package of constitutional amendments this week aimed at three mechanisms designed to survive a change of government (24.hu, Euronews). The package is not a gesture. With those parliamentary numbers, it can become law.

Three Locks

The first target is Hungary’s system of “cardinal laws”. These are areas of policy that can be changed only by a two-thirds vote in parliament. In principle, that kind of protection can be used for matters that should sit above ordinary party politics. Orbán used it far more widely.

Pensions, central bank oversight and even the structure of parliamentary committees were placed behind the supermajority threshold (24.hu). The effect was simple enough: even if Fidesz lost office, large parts of government would remain protected from a normal majority. The Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s constitutional advisory body, warned as far back as 2011 that the scope was excessive and allowed one government to bind the hands of the next on routine policy (Venice Commission).

Magyar’s proposal to narrow those laws is the cleanest part of the package. It would return more decisions to ordinary parliamentary politics. Elections would matter more because the winning side could actually govern.

The second lock is the Budget Council. Parliament cannot adopt the national budget without its approval. If the council refuses and no budget is passed by 31 March, the president can dissolve parliament (Fundamental Law). In a system still populated by holdover appointees from the Orbán era, that is not a neutral safeguard. It is an unelected deadlock switch.

Removing the council’s veto would take away another device left behind by the previous regime. It would not make Hungary’s public finances grand by itself, but it would stop a captured institution from being able to trigger a political crisis.

The third proposal is much harder to square with constitutional repair. Magyar’s draft 17th amendment would end President Tamás Sulyok’s mandate the day after it takes effect, even though his term runs until 2029 (de.Euronews). The Hungarian Helsinki Committee has put the objection plainly: removing a sitting president early may be defensible, but only if it is tied to objective rule-of-law criteria rather than an opaque political decision (Hungarian Helsinki Committee).

That is where the distinction between repair and revenge stops being theoretical. Narrowing cardinal laws restores power to ordinary majorities. Ending the Budget Council veto removes an anti-democratic trap. Removing a named president without formal proceedings looks much more like using constitutional power to settle an account.

Poland Shows Why the Method Matters

Poland has already shown how difficult this terrain becomes. After Donald Tusk’s coalition replaced PiS in 2023, it faced a state full of institutions reshaped by its predecessors. Rzeczpospolita described Orbán’s model as built on constitutional engineering, captured media and clientelist corruption (Rzeczpospolita).

On the right, especially in Austrian coverage, the same story is told differently: liberal forces invoke the rule of law to justify purges, with Tusk held up as the model Magyar may now follow (Kurier).

The Polish example matters because captured systems do not repair themselves. A new government may have to dismantle structures deliberately built to frustrate it. But if it relies on retroactive rules or personalised removals, its opponents can make a serious charge: that the new majority is reproducing the winner-takes-all logic it claims to be ending.

What the Commission Does Next

The Venice Commission has sent experts to Budapest but has not yet issued a formal opinion on the Sulyok clause (Telex). Until it does, claims that Europe’s constitutional experts have blessed or condemned the move are premature.

The European Commission has a separate and more material lever: billions in frozen Hungarian funds, tied to rule-of-law milestones (iConnectBlog). That is where Brussels faces its own test. The easy temptation will be to read Magyar’s political direction as proof of reform.

Some coverage is already leaning that way. Slovak reporting presents the package as Hungary “returning to Europe” (ta3). German reporting has been more careful, separating the fiscal reset from the constitutional method (taz).

For the Commission, the hard part is judging the method separately from whether it likes the government using it. Magyar’s reforms to cardinal laws and the Budget Council look like democratic repair. The removal of Sulyok looks different.

Hungary is now testing whether a captured constitutional order can be unwound without teaching the next supermajority that constitutions are simply instruments for removing today’s opponents. The Commission’s conditionality framework gives it leverage over Hungary. It gives it far less clarity on how to separate repair from retaliation.