Hungarian lawmakers are voting today on a 12-point constitutional amendment that would remove President Tamás Sulyok from office, in the most significant use of parliamentary power by Prime Minister Péter Magyar since his landslide April election victory ended Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule.
Magyar’s Tisza party holds a two-thirds supermajority and does not need opposition support. If the amendment passes and Sulyok refuses to sign it, Magyar has said Tisza will immediately initiate impeachment proceedings.
Sulyok, a 70-year-old former constitutional court head appointed by Orbán’s Fidesz party in 2024, insists his removal is unconstitutional. He replaced Katalin Novák, who resigned after pardoning a man convicted in a child abuse case. A May poll found 67% of Hungarians want Sulyok gone. Magyar has branded him unworthy of the post for failing to challenge Orbán’s attacks on the rule of law.
The amendment also introduces a 12-year term limit for MPs, forces four Orbán-allied constitutional court judges aged over 70 to retire immediately, restores the court’s power to review budgetary legislation and creates a National Asset Recovery and Protection Office to tackle endemic corruption.
Rights groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have cautioned that the rushed process echoes Fidesz-era tactics, though jurist Andras Baka, a former supreme court head whose own mandate Orbán cut short in 2011, said extraordinary measures are justified when a state has been captured.
