Hungary proposes eight-year prime minister limit to bar Orbán
hungary’s new government led by Péter Magyar put forward a constitutional amendment on Wednesday that would limit prime ministers to eight years in office. The draft rule would bar Viktor Orbán from returning to the post, a direct change to the terms of political competition just over a week after the new government took office.
Magyar and the Tisza party say the amendment is their first step in dismantling a constitution that Orbán and Fidesz rewrote unilaterally and amended more than a dozen times. Magyar had spent more than two years on the campaign trail promising term limits, and the draft now puts that pledge into legal form.
Péter Magyar’s term-limit draft
The proposal says a person who has served as prime minister for at least eight years in total, including interrupted terms, may not be elected again. It would apply to all prime ministerial terms held since Hungary’s democratisation in 1990, not just future service.
That sweep matters because Orbán has already served five terms as prime minister since 1998 and has spent a total of 20 years in power. Under the draft amendment, that history would put him outside the line of return to the office.
Viktor Orbán’s record since 1998
The draft amendment describes term limits as “essential” to restoring the rule of law. Magyar’s party says the rule would change the basic structure of the post-Orbán era, not just one politician’s prospects, by setting a hard ceiling on future time in office.
The proposal is expected to pass given Tisza’s own supermajority in parliament. That majority gives the new government the numbers to move quickly, and it also means the amendment is arriving with immediate legislative force rather than as a campaign promise awaiting a coalition bargain.
Parliament and the sovereignty office
The amendment would also pave the way for dissolving the sovereignty protection office, which was launched during Orbán’s last years in power. The office was accused of seeking to quell critics of Orbán’s government by allowing Hungary’s intelligence services to access information on individuals and organisations without judicial oversight.
The draft text also targets the foundations used during Orbán’s time to maintain nearly two dozen universities and thinktanks, including the Mathias Corvinus Collegium. Under the previous government, the foundations’ board of trustees gained complete control over those assets; the new proposal says that eliminated democratic control over public assets and amounted to an abuse of legislative power. The state could dissolve those foundations under the amendment.
The national assembly is expected to discuss the amendment next week, when Magyar’s government will have to turn a campaign promise into a constitutional test. A future leader with a two-thirds or supermajority could try to amend the term limit again, but the current draft would set the first hard barrier in front of Orbán’s return.
