Hungary's Constitutional Court is dealing with the end of President Sulyok's term. Fidesz runs into a rule it wrote itself

The Hungarian Constitutional Court will consider three provisions of the 17th amendment to the Fundamental Law on Monday, 17 August, all at once: the termination of President Tamás Sulyok's mandate, the twelve-year limit on serving as a member of parliament, and the age limit of 70 for constitutional judges. All three were challenged by Fidesz together with KDNP, and in doing so it runs into a restriction written by its own majority in 2013: the court may not review the content of constitutional amendments, only the procedure by which they were adopted. If it were nevertheless to strike down the point on Sulyok, according to lawyers quoted by Hungarian media, the president's legal status, which the amendment ended, could be restored, even though his successor András Baka has already been elected. They speak of a constitutional crisis. Index ↗

Three points, four motions and a nine-hour meeting without a result

All three points belong to the same 17th amendment, and Fidesz asked for a review of all three provisions. A fourth motion from the same series targets the law on access to EU funds. Telex ↗ Népszava ↗

The portal 444 notes that two of the three challenged rules have retroactive effect and affect both the current parliament and the court's current composition. It is precisely the twelve-year cap that means Viktor Orbán can no longer even be an MP. 444 ↗

Monday's hearing is not the first attempt. On Thursday, 13 August, the court spent more than nine hours considering four motions from Fidesz and KDNP and did not decide on any of them. Court secretary general Attila Szabó said only that the body complies with constitutional deadlines and will publish its decisions in due course. Index ↗ Portfolio ↗

The court is officially on judicial recess until 28 August. It is meeting despite that - and is deciding on the fate of its own members at the same time. HVG ↗

The 2013 trap is turning against Fidesz

The Constitutional Court may review amendments to the Fundamental Law only from a procedural perspective, not in substance. The reason is that Fidesz and KDNP took away that power from it in 2013. Index ↗ Hungarian Helsinki Committee ↗

Fidesz therefore has to frame its filing as a violation of the Fundamental Law's procedural requirements. The substantive argument is that under the heading of a constitutional amendment, what was in fact adopted was an individual exercise of power - the amendment does not abolish the office of president, nor does it create a head of state with a different status in its place. HVG ↗

Sulyok himself had already formulated the same question. In his view, it needs to be clarified whether acts that are not general in function, but individual, even fall within the concept of a constitutional amendment. Népszava ↗

At the same time, Fidesz is asking the Constitutional Court to refer a preliminary question to the Court of Justice of the European Union on the interpretation of Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union, that is, the values of the rule of law and democracy. The party, which spent years in disputes with European Union institutions over the rule of law, is thus invoking Luxembourg. HVG ↗

The judgment Fidesz lost - and now invokes

The paradox of the dispute is right there in the filing. In their submission against the termination of Sulyok's mandate, Fidesz MPs cited a judgment that their own government lost. "Baka's judgment therefore confirms that even legislation at constitutional level must not become a form that conceals the legal nature of an individual personnel decision," it says. Index ↗

This concerns Baka v. Hungary. Parliament elected András Baka in 2009 as president of the Supreme Court for six years, until 22 June 2015. After he publicly criticised the planned judicial reform, his mandate ended on 1 January 2012 - three and a half years early. On 23 June 2016, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, by a vote of 15 to 2, ruled that Hungary had violated Article 6(1) and Article 10 of the Convention, and awarded him EUR 70,000 for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage and EUR 30,000 for costs. European Court of Human Rights ↗ ICJ (full text of the judgment) ↗

That same András Baka is due to take office as president on 19 August. 24.hu ↗

Judges are deciding on their own mandate

According to 24.hu, with one exception, the motions are being decided by judges nominated and elected by the Fidesz majority. This is made possible precisely by the challenged age limit: the court's president and three of his colleagues over 70 do not have their mandates end until 1 September. 24.hu ↗

On that date, four are leaving: current president Péter Polt, Mária Haszonicsné Ádám, Miklós Juhász and Zoltán Lomnici. Index ↗

That this is not a theoretical problem was shown in June. When Sulyok wanted a declaration from the body he himself led until 2024 that Tisza, despite its majority, could not remove him, the meeting could not be held. Seven of the then fifteen judges announced grounds for recusal because of personal and direct interest, which deprived the body of a quorum. HVG ↗

On 13 August, the court elected Ágnes Czine as vice-president for the interim period, effective 1 September. Her own twelve-year term ends on 15 November. Over the next three months, parliament must elect five new constitutional judges and the court itself must choose a president from among its members. HVG ↗ Index ↗

What happens if the amendment falls

Lawyers Péter Hack and Zoltán Fleck do not rule out striking down the disputed provision. Hack points to the consequence: if the court were to strike down the rule that ended Sulyok's mandate, Sulyok's legal status would be restored, even though Baka's election has already taken place. In his view, this would create a constitutional crisis, and the solution should end up in parliament. 24.hu ↗ Index ↗

Fidesz's filing also has a weak point. Sulyok did not use the option of prior review of the norm - he signed the amendment that ended his mandate instead of turning to the Constitutional Court. Fidesz did so only after it had already entered into force. 24.hu ↗

Alongside the presidential case, the same court is also dealing with a motion carrying a hard deadline. It seeks to annul a key law that opens Hungary's access to EU funds before the final deadline of the recovery plan, 31 August 2026. Index puts the amount tied to this dispute at EUR 16.4 billion in frozen funds, of which EUR 10 billion comes from the Recovery and Resilience Plan. Index ↗

We already know one result from the same series of filings, and it was not favourable to Fidesz. On 14 August, the court rejected the part concerning public benefit foundations for lack of jurisdiction - that is, without a substantive constitutional review, as Magyar Nemzet also stresses. The EU funds item has not been decided by that. Index ↗ 444 ↗

What was missing from Slovak coverage

The election of András Baka on 11 August was covered by several Slovak and Czech media outlets - aktuality.sk, SME, Hospodárske noviny, ta3, SITA, Lidovky and iDNES. In our monitoring of Slovak and Czech media over the past week, we did not find the Monday hearing, which could call that same election into question, even once.

Read also: Hungary has President András Baka. Fidesz and KDNP do not recognise him, the Constitutional Court is dealing with motions against the amendments

Nor did the second layer that matters more for the court's future than any single ruling come up. The government led by Péter Magyar prepared an amendment to the Constitutional Court Act and introduced a detailed selection procedure for the body's president, but it did not touch a single element of the nomination and election of the judges themselves. The Hungarian Helsinki Committee says that if new judges are selected in the same politically influenced process as their predecessors, the restoration of independence will remain an illusion. Index ↗

Read also: Hungary elects a constitutional judge in one day. Amnesty criticises Magyar's government for the same one-sided approach it condemned under Orbán

Limits of this view

Hungarian media are highly polarised, and each outlet reads the same hearing through its own camp. Népszava is left-wing, Magyar Nemzet is a government-aligned pro-Fidesz daily and frames the whole matter by claiming that Baka may soon receive confirmation that he is an illegitimate head of state. We treat Telex, HVG, 444 and 24.hu as centre-left to investigative, and Index as centrist. The text therefore does not rest on the political assessments of individual editors, but on the overlap of information about the court's agenda, the filings and the deadlines. Magyar Nemzet ↗

Nothing has been decided yet. Monday is a hearing, not a verdict, and Thursday's nine-hour meeting ended with nothing. The court may adjourn again or once more lose its quorum, as it did in June. We also do not know in what composition it will ultimately decide, and the lawyers we approached admit both outcomes. We do not have the text of the filings; from them we know only what the Hungarian press quoted.

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