Hungary’s parliament voted Monday to amend the constitution to limit prime ministers to a maximum of eight years in office — a provision that would bar former PM Viktor Orbán from ever returning to power. The vote was 150 to 50, with six abstentions; all 50 opposing votes came from Orbán’s Fidesz party. The same session voted to scrap the legal basis for the Sovereignty Protection Office, a body created in 2023 ostensibly to guard against foreign influence but used in practice to investigate journalists and NGOs critical of Orbán. PM Péter Magyar’s Tisza party had won a landslide in April’s election, ending Orbán’s 16 years in power. The term-limits amendment was a major Tisza campaign pledge. Separately, Hungary’s lifting of its veto on Ukraine’s EU accession contributed to the formal launch of accession negotiations in Luxembourg on Monday, at which five foundational policy clusters were opened with Ukraine and Moldova.
The received wisdom
The liberal international order’s reaction to the week’s Hungarian and EU developments has been one of undisguised relief and enthusiasm. After years in which Orbán’s Budapest served as both a practical obstruction to EU policy — from Ukraine sanctions to accession talks — and an intellectual validation point for European populism, Magyar’s Tisza government is doing what it promised. Brussels is unlocking €16 billion in frozen EU funds, Hungary’s veto on Ukraine’s accession has been lifted, the Sovereignty Protection Office is being dismantled, and a term-limits amendment ensures Orbán cannot stage a comeback in the style of Putin’s constitutional manoeuvring. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas called Ukraine’s accession launch a moment that would “make Europe stronger.” The mainstream European press has greeted the week’s events as proof that the illiberal wave can be reversed democratically — and that the EU’s patient pressure on Hungary eventually worked.
A different read
There is genuine cause for satisfaction in Hungary’s democratic course-correction, and it should not be minimised. Orbán’s sixteen-year tenure produced a systematic erosion of judicial independence, press freedom, and civil society capacity that Human Rights Watch described as a “human rights crisis” as recently as April. The Sovereignty Protection Office was an instrument of political repression dressed in the language of national security — a pattern familiar from Viktor Medvedchuk’s Ukraine before 2022, and from authoritarian playbooks globally. Its abolition is unambiguously good.
But the method of preventing Orbán’s return warrants scrutiny. The term-limits amendment was passed using Tisza’s constitutional majority — the same kind of majority Orbán used to entrench his own power after 2010. The instrument is identical; only the direction has changed. Orbán himself noted the irony, posting sardonically that “the Orban law has been passed,” and he is not entirely wrong to do so. Constitutional majorities are supposed to be used for durable rules of governance, not as tools of immediate political exclusion against a specific individual. When a government uses its supermajority to write a constitutional provision whose primary operative effect is to bar its predecessor from office, it is using the form of constitutionalism against its substance — regardless of how much that predecessor deserved it.
This matters for Europe’s credibility on rule-of-law grounds. The EU’s Article 7 pressure on Hungary was consistently framed in terms of universal principles: judicial independence, free media, the separation of powers. Those arguments were correct. But they are now somewhat undermined if the EU informally welcomes — as Brussels evidently has — a new Hungarian government using a constitutional supermajority to write a targeted exclusion clause against its predecessor. The distinction between “using constitutional mechanisms to entrench the rule of law” and “using constitutional mechanisms to exclude one’s political opponent” is real but uncomfortably thin when the text is written to target one person.
The EU accession question raises a separate set of considerations. Ukraine’s formal accession launch — with five foundational chapters opened in Luxembourg — is a symbolic and political milestone. But accession negotiations require alignment across 35 policy chapters, and Ukraine is actively fighting a war while the territories it controls do not include the five regions Russia has announced annexing. The standard accession process, as Kaja Kallas acknowledged, “typically takes years.” Germany’s Chancellor Merz has floated an “associate membership” as an interim step. France and the Netherlands have discussed partial integration frameworks. The gap between the symbolism of the launch and the practical reality of accession — including the question of what happens to membership applications covering disputed territory — has not been resolved. It has been deferred.
Peter Magyar’s Hungary deserves a generous assessment. It is genuinely moving in the right direction: joining NATO consensus on Ukraine, pursuing euro adoption, opening its society. But democratic restoration built on constitutional exclusion rather than democratic persuasion sets precedents that travel badly across borders. Europe’s post-liberal democracies — Poland, Hungary, Slovakia — will all face moments when a returning majority wants to use its supermajority against the outgoing government. The lesson Magyar is teaching is that this is acceptable when the cause is just. That lesson will not stay in Budapest.
What to watch
- Constitutional court challenge: Orbán’s Fidesz party may challenge the term-limits amendment before Hungary’s constitutional court. The court’s composition — heavily packed with Fidesz-aligned judges — creates an interesting conflict.
- Sovereignty Protection Office dissolution bill: The full dissolution is expected to be voted on by end of June. Watch whether the legislation includes accountability mechanisms for past abuses, or simply closes the office.
- Ukraine accession chapter progression: Five chapters are open. Watch the pace at which subsequent clusters are opened — slow progress will test the political will of both sides.
- Hungary and the euro: Magyar’s euro commitment would require Hungary to meet convergence criteria currently out of reach. Watch for the IMF’s assessment of Hungary’s fiscal position post-Fidesz.
— J