Hungary’s new government on Wednesday put forward a constitutional amendment that would bar anyone who has served as prime minister for a total of at least eight years from ever holding the post again. The draft came just over a week after Péter Magyar’s government took office and, with his own supermajority in parliament, is expected to pass.
The amendment would apply to every prime ministerial term since Hungary’s democratisation in 1990, meaning the rule would cover Viktor Orbán’s five terms in office since 1998, which together added up to 20 years in power. Magyar, who spent more than two years on the campaign trail promising term limits more than a dozen times, has called the change essential.
Magyar’s draft says plainly that “a person who has served as prime minister, for a total of at least eight years, including any interruptions, may not be elected as prime minister.” That makes the proposal one of the clearest efforts yet by the new leadership to redraw the rules after Orbán and his Fidesz party rewrote and amended the constitution more than a dozen times during their long grip on power.
The same draft also paves the way for the dissolution of the sovereignty protection office, a body launched in Orbán’s last years in power and widely accused of trying to quell critics of his government. Under that arrangement, Hungary’s intelligence services were allowed to access information on individuals and organisations without judicial oversight, a power critics said was designed to intimidate opponents rather than protect the state.
The proposal goes further still by opening the door for the state to dissolve foundations that were used during Orbán’s time to maintain nearly two dozen universities and thinktanks, including the Mathias Corvinus Collegium. Under the previous government, boards of trustees — many of them stacked with Orbán loyalists — were handed complete control over those assets. The draft now states that the assets are national assets.
The amendment is set to be discussed next week when the national assembly convenes. That schedule gives Magyar a fast track to begin dismantling parts of the system built under Orbán, but it also puts his government immediately before the harder work of governing. Analysts say the new leadership must rebuild crumbling public services and a stagnant economy while many Fidesz loyalists remain embedded in the state, media and judiciary. It is also trying to unlock billions in frozen EU funds.
Magyar came to power last month on the back of a landslide election victory, and the first major constitutional move of his government is aimed squarely at the political era that preceded it. If the amendment passes as expected, Hungary will have written into law not just a term limit, but a formal rejection of the career path that kept Orbán in office for two decades.
