Sulyok Signs Away Presidency

Tamás Sulyok has signed the constitutional amendment that ends his own presidency. Hungary's Parliament passed it by 139 votes to 6, and Sulyok then put his name to the document that removes him from office the day after it takes effect (Telex, Euractiv). The process was lawful. The politics were anything but ordinary. Europe now has to decide whether Prime Minister Péter Magyar is rebuilding the checks and balances Viktor Orbán hollowed out, or simply putting a different hand on the same constitutional machinery.

The Tool and Its Builder

Hungary's president is elected by Parliament, not directly by voters. That means the office is only as independent as the parliamentary numbers allow. Magyar's TISZA party has a constitutional supermajority, so Sulyok's fate was settled before the vote began. The question is not whether Magyar could do it. He could. The question is what that power now becomes.

The amendment removes more than one president. It also forces Constitutional Court judges over 70 into retirement, opening seats that were filled during the Orbán years (G4Media). Before the vote, Magyar gave Sulyok a choice: sign the amendment, or face formal removal proceedings (TVN24).

Sulyok denounced the move as "unprecedented and shameful", then signed it all the same. His argument was a legal one: once a constitutional amendment had passed through the proper parliamentary procedure, he had no basis to refuse (Denník N). He could have sent it to the Constitutional Court, but only to review the procedure. The court lost the power to examine the substance of constitutional amendments in 2013, under Orbán himself (Telex).

That is the uncomfortable symmetry at the centre of the story. Magyar is taking apart Orbán's state by using the supermajority logic Orbán built. The method looks very like the majoritarian constitutional engineering he says he wants to end.

Why Neighbours Read It Differently

Poland understood the problem at once. Donald Tusk's government has been trying to loosen PiS-era institutional locks, but without the constitutional majority needed to break them cleanly. Magyar has that majority and is using it quickly. Rzeczpospolita described the Hungarian vote as a demand for "a change of regime", not just a change of government (Rzeczpospolita). DW saw the same lesson from the other side: speed can help undo capture, but it can also become a substitute for standards (DW).

Slovak coverage put the dilemma most sharply. Denník N asked whether a state that has been "occupied" institutionally can be repaired through exceptional constitutional tools without reproducing the same winner-takes-all logic (Denník N). Ta3 reported critics calling the amendment an ad hoc rule change aimed at a named individual, precisely the kind of charge once made against Orbán (ta3).

German-language coverage was less interested in Sulyok as a person. The real question for Berlin, and for other EU capitals including Dublin, is whether Magyar changes Hungary's behaviour in the Council, where member states make collective decisions and foreign policy often requires unanimity. Budapest has spent years blocking or slowing Ukraine-related sanctions and aid. Whether that obstruction ends matters more to the EU than the occupant of the presidential office (SRF).

What It Doesn't Unlock

Removing Sulyok does not, by itself, free Hungary's frozen EU money. The Council's 2022 conditionality decision suspended 55% of commitments under three cohesion-policy programmes because of rule-of-law breaches affecting the EU budget (Council of the EU). Cohesion funds are EU money aimed at reducing regional gaps across the bloc, and their suspension was one of Brussels' strongest levers against Orbán's system.

The Commission treats institutional checks and balances as a core rule-of-law category (European Commission), so this amendment will matter in Brussels. But it is not an automatic trigger. The conditions for releasing the money remain verifiable reforms in anticorruption, procurement transparency, and judicial independence.

Magyar has changed the political weather in Hungary. He has not yet changed the compliance file. The Commission cannot pay out funds because a government is anti-Orbán in intention; it has to be satisfied that new institutional guarantees exist in practice. Magyar has shown he can dismantle the old system. The harder test is whether he is building one that will limit his own power.