On 12 April 2026, Péter Magyar won a parliamentary victory in Hungary “big enough to be seen from Mars”, as Kim Lane Scheppele observed. Importantly, this victory mirrored the two-thirds parliamentary majority won by Viktor Orbán’s ruling party, Fidesz, when Orbán returned to power in 2010, a “revolution at the voting booths” that Orbán argued gave him the mandate for vast constitutional and politico-societal reform that eroded democracy and entrenched his power. As Jan-Werner Müller notes, “[h]aving won more votes than Fidesz ever did, Magyar can credibly claim a mandate to undo Orbán’s entire project.” And a massive “project” it was. From 2010 to 2026, the sixteen years of Orbán 2.0—following the first time he presided over the government from 1998 to 2002—were marked by a comprehensive destruction of institutional checks and balances, institutionalized corruption on a great scale that earned Hungary the title of a “mafia state”, complete control over public media and a broad control over commercial outlets, capture and expulsion of independent universities, reorientation of foreign policy into a strongly anti-EU, pro-Putin and pro-MAGA perspective, and hostility toward Ukraine since it became a victim of Russian aggression. Reports following Tisza’s (Magyar’s newly established party) win conveyed a quasi-revolutionary air. The aura of inevitability of Orbán’s persistent rule was dispelled. A colleague from Budapest, an eminent constitutional scholar, wrote to me two weeks ago in a private mail: “We are in a state of euphoria. All important matters are on the table and are being publicly discussed”.

But, without attempting in any way to diminish the Hungarian democrats’ post-victory enthusiasm and pride, an obvious thing must be observed at the outset: the numbers lie. Or, they do not tell the whole truth. The proportion of seats won by Tisza, giving it a clear constitutional majority, vastly overrepresents the proportion of primary votes. As a result of the quirks of the Hungarian electoral system, with its immense “victor’s compensation”, 54 percent of primary votes gave Magyar’s party 70 percent of seats in the unicameral parliament, while Orbán’s Fidesz obtained only 26 percent of seats with 38 percent of voter support. It is difficult not to notice that it is a nearly equal combination of numbers as in the directly previous elections of 2022, when Fidesz obtained 67.8 percent of parliamentary seats with 54 percent of primary votes, while the opposition coalition headed by Péter Márki-Zay got 28 percent of seats with 37 percent of votes. The results in 2026 are a mirror image of those in 2022; only the names of the parties change. (The voter turnout made a big difference, though. In 2022, it was 69.6 percent; while in 2026, 79 percent, where TISZA won more votes than any other party in Hungarian democratic elections in history). And the months that followed the 2026 elections show that Péter Magyar has decided to fight fire with fire: to turn Fidesz’s super-majoritarian weapons against them. Whether it is a good prognosis for Hungarian democracy remains to be seen.

Concerns that Orbán would be a disruptive opposition leader turned out to be unfounded. Following Tisza’s landslide victory, Orbán decided not to take his seat in parliament. But, as James Paterson of The Lowy Institute astutely observes, “[w]inning an election is not the same as dismantling a system.” Magyar swore that he “will not rule over Hungary [but] will serve [his] country”, but how he uses his new, immense power is not without concerned onlookers. The immediate changes introduced by Magyar confirm that the more the illiberal regime relied on law in eroding democracy, the more the successor democratic government’s reforms will clash with the orthodox understanding of the rule of law, the very principle it purports to restore. This is the heart of the rule of law conundrum in post-illiberal contexts, and Hungary provides a second vivid European illustration of this conundrum—after Poland. There are important differences, however, as this account will show.

Péter Magyar campaigned on fundamental change and has so far moved quickly to avoid allowing any of Orbán’s remaining loyalists to undermine Tisza’s victory. At the time of writing, initial actions taken that demonstrate a break with the Orbán government include returning Hungary to the International Criminal Court and removing targeted legal pressure from LGBTQ+ organizers and prominent independent journalists. Tisza has also reformed legislation regarding public media ownership and has abolished the Sovereignty Protection Office, which was “created by the previous Fidesz government to target independent journalists, civil society organizations, and academics receiving foreign funding.”

Most significantly—and controversially—Magyar has already amended the constitution twice: on 15 June and on 13 July. The latter, the 17th Amendment to the Fundamental Law, passed in the parliament by 139 votes to six, and is—as will become clear in a moment—of particular importance. (It may be observed, en passant, that the time for “consultation” offered to the public was … five days, a point depicted by some observers on the democratic side with justified bitterness. The speed with which Magyar proceeded did not allow for a real debate, much less an opportunity to ask the Venice Commission for an opinion, as some commentators would have liked). This amendment was framed as a stop-gap measure until the government could undertake a proper consultative process for a complete overhaul of Hungary’s 2011 Fundamental Law, which passed shortly after Fidesz won its supermajority in 2010.

Some observers on the democratic side noted that the Amendment overreaches and underreaches at the same time. It overreaches in the sense that some of its provisions did not have to be adopted so quickly because they did not serve the purported aim of restoring the rule of law. This point was made, for example, by the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, which pointed out that capping the term of office of MPs at 12 years was not absolutely necessary, a rational point considering that the amendment was adopted shortly after the elections, hence four years before the cap will become relevant. The Amendment also underreaches in that it left untouched some of the most invidious aspects of the Fundamental Law, such as a “definition of family” which was used as an openly anti-LGBT measure.

The President goes first

The 17th Amendment established a National Asset Recovery and Protection Office, which is designed to investigate and unwind widespread corruption under the previous government. Far more controversial than the anti-corruption measures are the provisions to remove people from influential positions, whom Orbán had carefully selected and could have stood in the way of Magyar’s reform.  The 17th Amendment removed Orbán loyalist President Tamás Sulyok, returned the retirement age for Constitutional Court judges to 70, shortened lifetime parliamentary service to a limit of 12 years with retroactive operation, and subjected the two highest officials in the judiciary to a recall by fellow judges. These measures deliberately sought to ‘unstack’ the positions Orbán had filled with loyalists.

However, Sulyok did not go quietly, and the amendment has raised rule of law concerns. Despite vocal dissent, Sulyok ultimately signed the 17th Amendment, effectively removing himself from the (largely symbolic) presidential role, saying: “I am fulfilling my obligation under the Fundamental Law—after thoroughly weighing my legal options and my conscience…At the same time, however, it is enduring proof that the fundamental values of a free society—the rule of law, democracy, and the principle of the separation of powers—have been trampled upon for the sake of political power”.

Sulyok initially wished to refer the amendment to the Constitutional Court—itself stacked by Orbán and therefore viewed largely as non-independent. However, doing so would have been largely futile, as Orbán had removed the Constitutional Court’s ability to rule on the constitutionality of amendments in 2013, leaving it with jurisdiction only over procedural review, on which Sulyok would not have strong arguments. Further, when Sulyok did submit the amendment to the court for early consideration, seven constitutional judges recused themselves, citing “personal and direct involvement in the matter”, making it impossible for the court to hear the petition, due to the lack of a quorum required for such issues.

Sulyok argued that the changes meant the presidential role “will no longer serve as any kind of check or balance”, whereas Magyar said, “[w]ith Tamás Sulyok’s signature, the last obstacle to our joint decisions coming into effect has been removed…We are restoring something that the Orbán regime has tried for many years to take away from the Hungarian people: the certainty that power can be limited”. These changes have drawn careful criticism from rule of law proponents who are otherwise optimistic about what the Hungarian regime change means for rebuilding the country’s democracy: “Hungary’s new government has good reason to embark on a major institutional overhaul, but the ends do not justify the means in a state that respects the rule of law…The progress the government makes on restoring the rule of law after years of damage is precious and fragile, and can be undone with hasty legislation that rides roughshod over due process and fairness”.

At a certain point, there was an expectation that the issues arising out of Magyar’s initial call for Sulyok’s resignation would be considered by the Venice Commission. On 4 June 2026, Sulyok published a lengthy, 22-page document on his official website, expressly addressed to the Venice Commission, consisting of a number of loaded questions such as: “What do constitutional standards regarding the removal of a President of the Republic who has not been directly elected and who plays a constitutional role as a counterweight within the system of separation of powers entail in a parliamentary democracy (including regarding amendments to accountability provisions affecting the incumbent President)? Can such Presidents of the Republic be removed from office on grounds that do not involve a finding of a violation of the law?” The document ended bitterly: “Retaliating against the President of the Republic because, during the campaign period, the President did not endorse the position of the then-opposition … cannot in any way be regarded as conduct unworthy of the office of the President or as conduct that undermines the authority of the office”.

What was somewhat ironic about these early steps by Sulyok was that, as Timea Drinóczi observed at the time, “His sudden reliance on the Venice Commission is particularly noteworthy given that Fidesz has routinely ignored its opinions and has repeatedly described the Commission as politically biased and a Soros agent”. (A personal disclaimer: I am a member of the Venice Commission and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, I am not a Soros agent). She also added that in this case, seeking the advice of the Venice Commission was realistically intended to delay democratic constitutional change, and “an attempt to create an additional veto point in the reconstruction process”. In the end, no formal application was made to the Venice Commission for an Opinion, even though a delegation of the Commission came for a short visit to Budapest in July 2026, before the adoption of the 17th Amendment, where they met separately with the President and the Prime Minister.

As we now know, Sulyok eventually signed the 17th Amendment, and eo ipso signed his own termination of office. In hindsight, we can easily determine that it was the best thing he has done as President of the Republic during his short and otherwise unremarkable term of office. By doing so, he greatly lowered the costs of the transition, all the more so since some unimpeachably democratic lawyers thought that the case for his dismissal was weak—as they thought, weaker than the justification for the removal of the Constitutional Court judges. His intransigence would have produced a drawn-out, politically costly process. The thinness of legal grounds for his dismissal is evidenced by the laconic, almost ritualistic official justification by the authors of the 17th Amendment: “There has been a serious loss of trust on the part of society in the functioning of the incumbent President of the Republic, while the voters gave extraordinary authorization for a two-thirds majority of the National Assembly to restore constitutional democracy and ensure the effective functioning of constitutional institutions”. A constitutional non sequitur, if ever there was one: a change of the parliamentary majority does not, per se, invalidate the appointments made by the previous parliament.

While legally problematic, politically speaking, Sulyok’s termination was a clear triumph for the democratic side, considering that the impeachment path was effectively foreclosed, not only because the Constitutional Court would have been at the end of that road but also because “It would be difficult to argue that President Sulyok … has violated Fundamental Law to a degree that meets the high accountability threshold attached to the office of the head of state”. And this was written by an eminent anti-Fidesz legal scholar! Even in early June 2026, the same scholar Timea Drinóczi hypothesized that, if Sulyok remains intransigent, the only path would be an “extra-constitutional reconstruction”, which would amount “to a form of popularly legitimized parliamentary coup”—not something that she would necessarily dismiss but which would have to be recognized “as a tragic … constitutional wrong committed to avoid greater anti-constitutional harm”. These words demonstrate what was at stake in this political and emotionally charged episode.

Incidentally, the same scholar notes, correctly, that part of the problem with the justification for Sulyok’s termination is linked to the fact that the presidential powers in Hungary are very weak: he can stall governmental initiatives but cannot prevent them, contrary to the powers of the Polish President who can effectively impede governmental initiatives. Drinóczi adds: “The analysis may differ in systems where heads of state hold stronger positions, possess stronger veto powers, and parliamentary override thresholds are higher than the actual parliamentary majority, as in Poland. Here, the constitutional justification for removal may become more compelling” (emphasis added). But here is a paradox: the very factors that strengthen presidential powers, thus rendering the president more culpable in cases of constitutional misdeeds and reinforcing the justification for removal, also render such removal much less feasible, especially when the president enjoys an independent electoral legitimacy through popular suffrage, as is the case in Poland, where the termination of the term of office of the President is, for all practical purposes, impossible.

Almost immediately after Sulyok’s (self-)removal, his successor was elected by the new parliamentary majority. The symbolic contrast between the two figures could not be bigger: András Baka—elected on 19 August 2026—is a household name in European legal history, recognizable by a landmark judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) Baka v. Hungary. He was previously a judge of the ECtHR for two terms; and formerly, served as President of the Supreme Court elected for a six-year term in 2009. After his public statements criticizing the Orbán government’s judicial overhaul, his tenure was terminated in 2011, as the Fidesz majority changed the name of the Supreme Court to Kúria and established eligibility criteria for its president which made Baka ineligible. The European Court of Human Rights decided in a Grand Chamber panel in 2016 that both his right to an independent tribunal under Article 6 of the European Convention and to freedom of expression under Article 10, were violated. However, since formally his office was restructured and filled with different personnel, he was never restored to his earlier position. Since then, he has remained active in constitutional and legal debates in Hungary and elsewhere in Europe—with a reputation as a critic of the assaults on the rule of law. Now he has been catapulted into the position of President.

Constitutional Court (un)packing

However, the office of the President of Republic, while symbolically the most visible, was only one of a large suite of authoritarian enclaves implanted in the institutional system during Orbán’s rule. The Constitutional Court was another. Here, Magyar proceeded by smart court-packing through simple lowering of the age limit, by the 17th Amendment, to 70. This immediately removed 4 pro-Orbán judges (including the President of the Court), and was relatively easy to justify because, strictly speaking, it was a restoration of the limit valid until Orbán removed it in order to pack the Court with his loyalists. In addition to the 4 immediate vacancies, the restoration of the old limit also offered the perspective of four further seats being made available in a reasonably short time, thus providing a realistic, though not immediate, chance for Magyar’s removal of pro-Orbán constitutional judges. 8 new judges would constitute a majority on the 15-judge court.

A tricky point was the issue of non-prospectivity: the age limit, to be politically effective today, applies to already sitting judges, and not merely to those elected after the amendment came into force. This could be seen—and was seen by some—as a violation of one of the fundamental principles of the rule of law. (It may be recalled—as I describe it in my book at pp. 106-110—that when the PiS government in Poland tried to use this trick on Małgorzata Gersdorf, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who was deeply disliked by PiS; the leading argument against the government was that such a lowering of the age may be effective only in relation to judges elevated to that position after the new rule entered into force). Indeed, the Venice Commission’s Rule of Law Checklist dictates sternly (in para. 106) that “changes of age limits are … matters which would require particularly close scrutiny…”.

Would the removal of already sitting judges, with immediate effect, as a result of the restoration of the previous age limits, withstand such “particularly close scrutiny”? Some had no doubt that it was a necessary and proportionate measure, justified by the compelling purpose of restoring a truly independent Constitutional Court. Others balked at the very idea of removing judges whose initial appointments were made lege artis. The Hungarian Helsinki Committee came up with an ingenious compromise solution, based on a distinction between those incumbent judges who were the product of a “unilateral” appointment by the Orbán-era parliamentary majority (who would be affected by the immediate removal) and those whose candidatures resulted from a consensus reached by the parliamentary majority and the opposition parties of the day, and who would be immune to the termination of office. The Opinion by the Helsinki Committee takes, as a point of departure, the maxim (attributed to the Venice Commission) that “a person whose appointment was unconstitutional cannot claim the protection of constitutional guarantees”. In fact, the Opinion of the Venice Commission referred to by the Helsinki Committee’s jurists says something a little narrower: “[T]he persons elected in a manner and in circumstances conflicting with the Constitution cannot rely on the security of tenure provided by that very Constitution”. “Security of tenure” is narrower in scope than “constitutional guarantees”, tout court.

But let us not engage in hair-splitting, all the more since the same Venice Commission, later, pronounced in its Updated Rule of Law Checklist, para. 159, in the context of Rule of Law restoration, that “[t]aking radical measures, such as the dismissal of judges … will require particularly careful scrutiny and safeguards…”—hence it is not categorically proscribed. Even though, formally speaking, all incumbent Hungarian constitutional judges were appointed in accordance with constitutional procedure (which distinguishes them from some judges on the Polish Constitutional Tribunal), nevertheless the Helsinki Committee observes, their election was made according to new procedures, which eliminated the previous parity-based nomination of candidates. Hence “all those who became members of the courts as a result of a unilateral nomination and election process” should be considered as owing their appointments to violations of the rule of law in the appointment procedures, so their mandates can be terminated. This would likely be an effective move: on the day of the electoral victory of Magyar, 11 of the 15 judges were “single party judges”, i.e. appointed exclusively by the government majority, without the consent of the opposition. Hence, leaving only the 4 incumbent judges in office would easily allow Magyar to reach a majority on the Court.

As the example of the Helsinki proposal indicates, court-packing Magyar-style was not the only option on the table about how to deal with that institutional enclave. A leading constitutional scholar, Pál Sonnevend, suggested an even more radical solution, bearing a striking resemblance to my own proposal about how to deal with the Constitutional Tribunal in Poland, namely by extinguishing its existence altogether and replacing it with a new composition of non-compromised judges. As Sonnevend wrote: “A comprehensive reform would certainly be effective, whereby the Fundamental Law would … provide for the termination of the mandates of all incumbent constitutional judges after a certain transitional period…” (emphasis added). This, however, was never seriously contemplated as a feasible option (just like my own proposal, I regretfully admit). An interesting postscript to this story: Professor Sonnevend became a justice of the Hungarian Constitutional Court on 28 July 2026.

In addition, it should be recalled that some of the incumbent constitutional judges inherited from the Orbán era, quickly showed unmistakable signs after Magyar’s victory that they “savent où sont les confitures” (to use a French saying, or in a less ambitious English culinary translation: know on which side their bread is buttered), and moved opportunistically to the winning side (e.g. by recusing themselves from the case of the constitutionality of the 17th Amendment).

As far as the election of the new President of the Court, the Amendment passed this competence back to the judges themselves—where that power resided until Orbán began electing the Court Presidents by (his) parliament. This change has met with universal applause from legal scholars, as did the restoration of the Constitutional Court’s power to review matters with budgetary effects—something that was removed from the Court early in the 2010s when it was not yet completely controlled by Orbán. All these changes—on the retirement age, on the election of the President, and on the Court’s powers, may be seen, accurately, as a return to a status quo ante (ante Orbán 2.0, that is), and for that reason, they are likely to face more lenient public scrutiny than outright constitutional novelties would.

Judicial purges

Two other top judicial offices, which might have been seen as potential autocratic enclaves in a restored democracy, were also radically restructured by the 17th Amendment—though through a different approach, rather than by lowering the retirement age. The Presidents of the Kúria (i.e. the Supreme Court, as renamed under Orbán rule) and of the National Judicial Office (a body in charge of administering the entire court system) were to be subjected to a procedure of recall by fellow judges, through a procedure not determined in detail by the 17th Amendment. Since both these apparatchiks are widely disliked by many ordinary judges, the expectation was that the recall mechanism would purge the judiciary of these top officials.  This is particularly obvious in the case of the President of the Kúria, András Zsolt Varga, whose election in 2021 required several ad hominem amendments of the law in place at the time, and was orchestrated despite the overwhelming vote by the National Judicial Council (a representative body, not to be confused with the National Judicial Office) against his candidature. (In addition, these two officials are also subject to other methods of dismissal, namely by a “discharge” and “deprivation of office”, though no details for these procedures were announced in the Amendment). As the Helsinki Committee, which supported the termination of Varga’s term of office by an ad hominem amendment, argued: “the president of the Kúria could not invoke the constitutional protection of removability on account of the serious deficiencies in his election, and therefore there would be no obstacle to his removal through a one-time legislative act”.

However, it is interesting that Magyar has not decided to terminate their terms of office ex lege by the Amendment (as was the case of the President of the Republic) but left such a decision in the hands of other judges. Perhaps this can be seen as an expression of prudence: terminating a high judicial office by legislative act would almost certainly be seen as anathema by European judicial and advisory bodies. And yet, a prominent Hungarian law professor raised the question (with a positive answer implied) “whether new constitutional rules could allow for the removal of the sitting president of the Kúria because his election was made possible by ad hominem legislation and against the vote of the National Judicial Council”. Other legal commentators also thought that the incumbent President of the Kúria should have seen “his mandate terminated by a one-off amendment”, and that this task should not have been transferred to judges, a move which was “likely to lead to serious conflicts within the already divided judiciary”. Under the revised principles (The Updated Rule of Law Checklist, paras 103 and 104) affirmed by the Venice Commission, “serious irregularities in the appointment of judges” undermine the right to an “independent and impartial tribunal established by law” (which is the terminology of Article 6, European Convention of Human Rights). Circumstances surrounding the judicial appointment of Varga seem to match these indicia. 

Institutional revolution

So much for the judiciary. But Magyar’s institutional revolution also reached broadly into the executive and the legislature. In the 16th Amendment, the total period a Prime Minister can serve in that office was established as 8 years (not consecutive but in total) which immediately disqualifies Orbán from ever running for that office. (Incidentally, considering Magyar’s relatively young age—45 in 2026, it is also a remarkable self-limitation on his part, assuming that in the future he will not take advantage of the ease of constitutional amendment in Hungary to remove this term limit, Latin-American style). Members of the parliament in turn face a limit of 12 years, which of course would mainly affect Orbán’s most faithful loyalists and would leave MPs from Magyar’s Tisza, a brand-new party in the Hungarian political landscape, immune from this disqualification for the next 12 years. For this reason, the Helsinki Committee urged a removal of this provision from the draft Amendment, pointing out that this change “would affect only the current government party’s political opponent disproportionately and disadvantageously”.

A comment in the newsletter of a reputable international NGO IDEA noted, similarly, that the 12-year limit “rais[ed] concerns that the amendment serves partisan goals rather than rule of law restoration….”. Perhaps the style of the Explanatory Memorandum added insult to injury: it was an exercise in extreme tokenism. The “explanation” the Memorandum’s authors provided for this quite dramatic change was that “the limitation of the term of office contributes to the wider emergence of new social experiences and approaches in the legislatures”. (The entire Memorandum consists basically of the verbatim repetition of the articles that were meant to be “explained”. Even with the best of intentions towards the substance, it is hard not to see a certain arrogance in such a failure to provide more developed reasoning in favor of such major constitutional changes). 

Cardinal laws decimated 

Finally, a constitutional change of great importance introduced by the 17th Amendment, though largely hidden in the obscure legalese in its final provisions, was a radical limitation of the scope of “cardinal laws”, i.e. areas which must be regulated by acts of quasi-constitutional standing, in that they require a qualified majority of 2/3 for their adoption. The issue calls for some explanation. In the early years of Hungarian post-communist democracy, “cardinal laws” functioned as a proxy for a new, comprehensive constitution. Since adopting such a constitution turned out to be chimerical in Hungary—even if only because none of the parties or coalitions ruling Hungary since 1989 and before Orbán’s return to power in 2010 commanded a majority of two-thirds that would have been necessary under the 1989 constitutional amendment—elevating some laws to the status of constitutional acts seemed like a good temporary measure, stabilizing some solutions and yielding a need for compromise between the majority and the opposition of the day in the areas requiring super-majority approval. As Professor Sonnevend explains, at the time “these [cardinal] acts functioned during the transitional period as quasi-supplements to the Constitution….”

But, as Angela Di Gregorio and Jan Sawicki explain, under Orbán “cardinal laws” acquired a different and much more invidious function: to “exclude the [parliamentary] minority of any possibility of taking part in a real pluralist parliamentary confrontation … and above all … to impede a future [parliamentary] majority, but not a qualified one” to affect the choices made earlier by a super-majority. No wonder that even the adoption of the much-heralded Fundamental Law (followed by fifteen amendments) did not dispense with the political rationale for not merely maintaining, but even vastly expanding, the scope of “cardinal laws”. Eventually, they reached a gargantuan size: before the 17th Amendment entered into force, they included 38 areas, encompassing taxation, pensions, education, and media, and the list of cardinal laws runs to 69 pages in a document of the National Assembly.

Magyar’s 17th Amendment radically reduced that number, confining “cardinal laws” to institutional and procedural matters. The official rationale was that “Rules adopted by qualified majority unnecessarily widely restrict the democratic majority that does not have a constitutional majority from exercising public power in an appropriate manner”. This may be correct, but the point is that without a change of the electoral system, with its victor’s dividend, the winning majority is almost guaranteed a constitutional majority, so restricting the range of cardinal laws has no practical effect. But there is another aspect: reserving an area to the category of cardinal laws effectively hands to a sizable minority (larger than one-third) in the parliament a power of veto against laws adopted by a simple majority (less than two-thirds). The opposition to Tisza today does not enjoy such a veto, but in the future, who knows?

The official rationale for a limitation of the scope of cardinal laws enumerates the areas which should be kept within the range of “cardinal laws”; they are “only those subjects that are indispensable for the stability of constitutional democracy”. A specific list that is provided in this document contains mainly various procedural and institutional aspects of top state and local offices. The general direction was quickly applauded by the democratic commentators, though the specific certification of issues lending themselves to cardinal-law status remained a matter of controversy. The Helsinki Committee thought that removing the requirement of a qualified majority from the regulations of the National Bank, the State Audit Office and the investigative parliamentary committees was not obviously justified, and just as with almost all other parts of the 17th Amendment, a rationale for the new dispensation was not provided.

Seizing the constitutional moment 

Magyar and his collaborators see all those changes as paving the way to a completely new Constitution, as highlighted in the 17th Amendment itself (Articles 2 and 3) replacing the deeply ideological and at the same time strongly authoritarian Fundamental Law. I have discussed both these aspects of Orbán’s constitution elsewhere. Whether this promise will be fulfilled remains to be seen, but already now it is clear that all these specific provisions and designs of the two constitutional amendments of June/July 2026 must be seen as parts of a larger whole that will take shape in the years to come. In fact, despite some views to the contrary, Magyar seized the constitutional moment. Moving very quickly and à tous azimuts, he has all but superseded the Fundamental Law, depriving it of most of its ideological and authoritarian bite.

But it should be added that the “constitutional moment” carries little weight in Hungary. A combination of a very easy constitutional-making and amending procedure (a simple two-thirds majority in a unicameral parliament, with no additional requirements or “roadblocks”) plus an eccentric electoral system which provides winners with an immense “bonus” making it easy for winners to reach the constitution-making threshold, produces a constitution which cannot be seen as substantially superior to ordinary lawmaking and politics. If Magyar wishes to overcome the system that brought him such a gigantic victory—yet remains at the same time so aberrational by the standards of liberal-democratic constitutionalism—he should move in at least these two directions: adopt a constitution that is more deeply entrenched than the current one and fundamentally change the pathological electoral system. Neither of these two accomplishments will be obviously advantageous for him politically, so whether he will move in these directions will be a true test for his statecraft.

Magyar’s “constitutional moment” may be partly explained by the lessons he was able to draw from another country, well familiar to many Hungarians, which faces precisely the same problem: how to restore democracy and the rule of law in the context of numerous, deeply entrenched autocratic enclaves? As Timea Drinóczi warned less than a year before the 2026 elections: “[U]nlike in 2022, we now have a real-time laboratory: Poland. There, a democratic government is attempting to undo the legal legacy of its illiberal predecessor and has already lost the presidential election in the process. The Polish case demonstrates how innovative approaches … can be defeated by a traditional, more formalistic approach to constitutionalism and the rule of law.”

The Polish experience weighed on the minds of many Hungarian lawyers during those unusual weeks and months after Magyar’s victory. And it was also present in the broader European consciousness: Renata Uitz, when referring to Donald Tusk’s predicament in the face of a hostile President, correctly noted: “Thanks to the Polish experience, European institutions have a better understanding of the complexities of constitutional recovery in the shadow of veto plays [sic] that are supported by robust transnational illiberal political networks”. Thus, in an article about the Venice Commission’s potential contribution to the Hungarian restoration of the rule of law, Angelika Nussberger—an eminent German scholar and member of the Venice Commission—observed: “For the Venice Commission, it is important that the measures aimed at restoring the rule of law are, as a rule, themselves compatible with the overall standards of the rule of law. However, exceptions are permitted when adherence to existing legislation would perpetuate an unacceptable status quo” (emphasis added).

This is new language coming from Venice Commission circles: “perpetuation of an unacceptable status quo” by adherence to the legislation in force—which was impossible to change due to the Presidential veto and an unreconstructed Constitutional Tribunal—is precisely what has plagued Polish efforts at restoring the rule of law. Hungarian democrats, assisted by a combination of the qualified majority in the Parliament, a weak and easily dismissible President, and a weakly entrenched Constitution, as well as a single-party government, are on the path of avoiding “Sisyphean democracy”. But it is still a work in progress.