President of Hungary signs constitutional amendment ending his term early

Hungarian President Tamás Sulyok has signed a constitutional amendment that prematurely terminates his term in office while also reshaping the Constitutional Court and changing the rules governing parliamentary deputies. The bill was passed by the Hungarian parliament on Monday, with 139 lawmakers from the ruling Tisza party voting in favour.

Tisza leader Péter Magyar had earlier called on the president to resign voluntarily, but Sulyok refused — prompting the ruling party to amend the constitution in order to force him out. Sulyok ultimately signed the document himself, despite having sharply criticised it beforehand as a violation of the rule of law, democracy and the separation of powers.

"This is a unique situation in Europe, where a sitting president of the republic is being removed from office for purely political reasons, which clearly contradicts the guarantees of autonomy of the presidential institution," the president's office said in a statement published on its website. It stressed that the decision was personalised and included in the final provisions of the constitutional amendment.

After the document was signed, Magyar wrote on Facebook that the presidential duties would temporarily be taken over by parliamentary speaker Ágnes Vadai-Forsthofferová, a Tisza representative. According to him, parliament is required to elect a new president of the republic within 30 days. "We expect proposals for candidates for the new head of state from political parties and citizens alike. I will discuss the candidacies with the parliamentary party factions, but the final decision rests with the legislature," the Hungarian prime minister said.

Former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned against the arbitrary rule of the current parliamentary majority. "Today the last barrier has fallen. Arbitrary power is no longer a threat — it is a reality. If this could happen to the president of the republic, then tomorrow no one will be safe. God save Hungary!" Orbán wrote on Facebook.

For a week beforehand, the prime minister had warned that if President Sulyok failed to sign the amendment, impeachment proceedings would be launched against him, and the powers of the head of state would temporarily pass to parliamentary speaker Forsthofferová.

In Hungary, the head of state is elected by parliament. Sulyok's candidacy was put forward in 2024 by the then-ruling Fidesz party. He took office on 5 March 2024 and is leaving the post less than two and a half years into what was originally a five-year term.

Sulyok has thus become the second consecutive head of state to fail to serve out a full term. Before him, Katalin Novák also failed to complete her mandate, resigning in early 2024 following a scandal over her pardon of the deputy director of a children's home in Bicske, who had covered up sexual abuse of children by the institution's director.

Before that, Pál Schmitt also failed to see out his presidential mandate, stepping down in 2012 after the senate of Budapest's Semmelweis University stripped him of his doctoral degree over plagiarism. According to Hungarian media, in his 215-page doctoral dissertation, Schmitt had copied up to 180 pages from the work of Bulgarian sports historian Nikolay Georgiev.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz