Hungarian President Tamás Sulyok agreed to leave office after signing the country's 17th constitutional amendment on the date of July 18, 2026. The measure provided for his presidency to end at midnight on Sunday, resolving an immediate standoff with the government while opening a wider dispute over the way Hungary was dismantling institutions shaped under former prime minister Viktor Orbán.
Sulyok faced a Saturday-night deadline to approve the amendment or risk impeachment proceedings and a prolonged constitutional confrontation. In a statement confirming his decision, he accused Prime Minister Péter Magyar's government of violating the rule of law. He called the measure a breaking point for constitutional democracy and said political power had taken precedence over the values of a free society.
Magyar's Tisza party had driven the amendment through parliament after winning a landslide election in April. Its government regarded Sulyok as loyal to Orbán, whose Fidesz administration lost power after 16 years. The amendment cited a serious loss of confidence in the president as the basis for ending his term.
The measure went beyond the presidency. It also removed the head of the Constitutional Court and barred members of parliament who had served three terms from seeking election again. That restriction applied to more than half of the sitting Fidesz deputies, according to the BBC report. Tisza's 141 lawmakers gave the result a standing ovation when parliament approved it with an overwhelming majority on Monday.
Orbán denounced the amendment as tyrannical and called for protests. Fidesz had itself used repeated two-thirds parliamentary majorities while in government to reshape state institutions and place allies in posts designed to be independent. Since its election victory, Tisza had moved quickly to alter that inherited constitutional structure.
András Baka, a former head of Hungary's Supreme Court, supported removing Sulyok but said dismantling an authoritarian system designed to survive an electoral defeat would be difficult. His assessment highlighted the central tension: the new government presented its measures as a way to unwind political capture, while its opponents and Sulyok challenged the legitimacy and concentration of the methods being used.
Sulyok's signature determined the immediate outcome but did not settle that argument. His office was set to end automatically under the new amendment, while the other changes would affect the judiciary and the eligibility of many veteran legislators. The event marked a rapid transfer of institutional power following Fidesz's defeat and a consequential test of how Hungary's new majority would use its mandate. The supplied report did not name an immediate successor to Sulyok.
