Magyar Moves on Orbán’s Legal Locks

Péter Magyar is trying to undo the constitutional system Viktor Orbán spent thirteen years building. He has the numbers. The more difficult question is whether a new supermajority can dismantle Orbán’s locks without turning the constitution into the winner’s property.

Hungary’s prime minister submitted a package of constitutional amendments this week aimed at three mechanisms Orbán designed to survive even after electoral defeat (24.hu, Euronews). With Tisza holding 141 of 199 parliamentary seats, this is not political theatre. The package can pass.

Three Locks

The first target is Hungary’s “cardinal laws”: areas of policy that can be changed only with a two-thirds majority in parliament. Orbán put an unusually wide stretch of normal government business behind that threshold, including pension rules, central bank oversight and even the structure of parliamentary committees (24.hu). The Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s constitutional advisory body, warned as far back as 2011 that the system went too far because it allowed one government to bind future ones on routine policy (Venice Commission). Magyar’s proposal would narrow the scope of these laws and return more decisions to ordinary majority politics.

The second target is the Budget Council. Parliament needs its approval before it can adopt the national budget. If the council refuses and no budget is passed by 31 March, the president can dissolve parliament (Fundamental Law). In a small state like Malta, where appointments and institutional loyalties are never abstract, the mechanism is easy to recognise: a formal body can become a political tripwire long after the government that shaped it has left office. In Hungary’s case, the council is packed with Orbán-era holdovers. Removing its veto would take away one unelected switch capable of forcing deadlock.

The third element is much harder to defend on principle. Magyar’s draft 17th amendment would end President Tamás Sulyok’s mandate the day after it takes effect, years before his term expires in 2029 (de.Euronews). The Hungarian Helsinki Committee’s objection is precise: removing a sitting president early may be defensible, but only if it is tied to objective rule-of-law criteria, not left as an opaque political choice (Hungarian Helsinki Committee).

That is where the distinction between repair and revenge stops being theoretical. Narrowing cardinal laws gives power back to ordinary majorities. Removing the Budget Council veto dismantles an anti-democratic trap. Removing one named president without formal proceedings looks closer to using constitutional power to settle a political account.

Poland Shows Why the Method Matters

Poland faced a version of this problem after Donald Tusk’s coalition replaced PiS in 2023. Rzeczpospolita described Orbán’s model as built on constitutional engineering, captured media and clientelist corruption (Rzeczpospolita). Right-leaning Austrian coverage reads the same events differently: as evidence that liberal forces use the language of rule of law to justify purges, with Tusk as the model (Kurier).

Poland shows why method matters. A captured system may need active dismantling. Maltese readers hardly need a lecture on what institutional capture can do when the same networks sit across politics, appointments, media and public administration. But if a new majority uses retroactive rules and personalised removals, its opponents can plausibly argue that it is reproducing the same winner-takes-all logic it claims to be ending.

What the Commission Does Next

The Venice Commission has sent experts to Budapest, but it has not yet issued a formal opinion on the Sulyok clause (Telex). Until that verdict arrives, any claim that Europe’s constitutional experts have either blessed or condemned the amendment is premature.

The European Commission has a separate and more practical lever: billions in frozen Hungarian funds, conditional on rule-of-law milestones (iConnectBlog). The temptation in Brussels will be to treat Magyar’s political direction as proof of reform. Slovak coverage is already framing the package as Hungary “returning to Europe” (ta3). German reporting is more cautious, separating the fiscal reset from the constitutional method (taz).

The Commission’s test is whether it can judge the method separately from whether it likes the government using it. Magyar’s reform of cardinal laws and abolition of the Budget Council veto look like democratic repair. The Sulyok removal looks different. Hungary is asking whether a captured constitutional order can be fixed without teaching the next supermajority that constitutions are simply instruments for removing today’s opponents. The Commission’s own conditionality framework gives it no easy way to separate the two.