Prime Minister Péter Magyar has pushed through a constitutional amendment capping prime ministerial service at eight years, locking his predecessor Viktor Orbán out of any return to power.
Magyar secured the change on June 15, when lawmakers in Budapest backed it by 135 votes to 50, with six abstentions. The measure limits any prime minister to a total of eight years, or two terms.
It applies retroactively to all tenures held after May 2, 1990. Under the new wording, anyone who has served at least eight years in the post “cannot be elected prime minister”.
The amendment delivered a central campaign promise for Magyar, whose Tisza Party ousted Orbán in April after 16 consecutive years in office.
He framed the overhaul as a promised “regime change” after Orbán’s long dominance of Hungarian politics.
Magyar’s party won a two-thirds majority in the April 12 election, taking 53 per cent of the vote and 141 seats in the National Assembly. That supermajority lets his government rewrite the Fundamental Law and unpick legislation passed under Orbán’s Fidesz.
He argued that unlimited tenure could lead to a dangerous concentration of power, citing his predecessor as a warning.
Fidesz opposed the amendment, arguing that term limits could restrict the will of voters. The party cast the vote as a personal move against its leader, who remains head of the opposition.
Orbán governed for a total of 20 years across five terms, the last 16 of them unbroken. His only route back would be for Fidesz to win its own supermajority in the 2030 election and repeal the measure.
Magyar has also moved to scrap the Sovereignty Protection Office, a body created under Orbán that critics said targeted opposition figures and journalists. The amendment clears the way for its dissolution.
A pro-EU conservative, Magyar has set himself against a predecessor who for years was the bloc’s most persistent internal critic, wielding his veto to slow joint decisions on Ukraine and on enlargement.
He has said he would restore Hungary’s Western alliances and unlock billions of euros in EU funds that were frozen during prolonged rule-of-law disputes with Brussels.
