Restoration or Rupture? The Proposed Seventeenth Amendment to Hungary’s Fundamental Law and the Limits of Constitutional Repair

https://doi.org/10.63189/WHNE1393

The draft Seventeenth Amendment of the Fundamental Law of Hungary, published for public consultation on 22 June 2026, presents Central European constitutional lawyers with an unusually clean test of intellectual consistency. For most of the past sixteen years, analyses of Hungarian constitutional law have concerned amendments adopted by a two-thirds majority in the name of constitutional identity, which were often criticised by European institutions as departures from the shared standards of the rule of law.^[1] The Seventeenth Amendment reverses the political vector yet preserves the underlying legal technique: a two-thirds majority proposes, this time in the name of restoring the rule of law, a series of changes reaching deeply into the composition, tenure and organisation of the country’s principal institutions.

Between the elections of 12 April 2026 and the end of June, the new majority formed by the Respect and Freedom Party (TISZA) around Prime Minister Péter Magyar has moved with remarkable speed. On 15 June 2026, Parliament adopted the Sixteenth Amendment, introducing a retroactive eight-year cap on the office of Prime Minister and creating the constitutional basis for dissolving the Sovereignty Protection Office and winding up the public-interest asset-management foundations (KEKVAs).^[2] One week later, the Government submitted the draft Seventeenth Amendment^[3] for a five-day public consultation ending on 27 June.^[4] Around the same time, Parliament adopted a comprehensive amendment of the Media Act.^[5] Together, these instruments constitute the first legislative phase of what the Prime Minister has named “Operation Cleansing Fire” (Tisztító Tűz), presented as an effort to dismantle sixteen years of state capture.^[6]

The purpose of this commentary is not to pass political judgment on the ends of that operation. It is to examine, with the tools of constitutional law, whether the means chosen can be reconciled with standards developed by the Venice Commission and the European Court of Human Rights precisely to prevent the misuse of constituent power. Many of these standards were articulated in response to Hungarian legislation of the previous era. It is only intellectually honest to apply them with equal rigour to legislation of the current one. If the yardstick moves with the majority, it is not a yardstick.

The Venice Commission’s updated Rule of Law Checklist,^[7] adopted in 2025, sets the governing principle: measures aimed at restoring the rule of law must themselves be compatible with its overall standards; exceptions are permitted only where adherence to existing legislation would perpetuate an unacceptable status quo, and the aim of preventing a relapse into illiberalism must always be kept in mind.^[8] Applied to the package of June 2026, that principle yields a mixed verdict. Some of the measures are unobjectionable in substance and defensible in method. Others reproduce the very techniques against which the invocation of the rule of law is directed.

Retroactive term limitations for members of parliament

The first, and doctrinally the most troubling, measure introduces a twelve-year lifetime ceiling on eligibility to stand for the National Assembly. Under the new Article XXIII(2), any person who has served as a member of Parliament for a combined total of at least twelve years is barred from standing.^[9] The rule counts terms served before adoption. It is, in that precise sense, retroactive in effect if not in form. The Hungarian Helsinki Committee, hardly a voice sympathetic to the previous governing party, has observed that the cap “affects the opposition far more severely than the governing party” and “does not point toward any self-limitation of governmental power.”^[10]

The more fundamental difficulty concerns the constitutional logic of representation. A term limit is, in form, a restriction on the candidate; in substance, it is a restriction on voters, who are barred from re-electing a representative of their choice for the rest of that person’s life. To describe such a bar as “democratic renewal,” as the accompanying explanation does, is to redefine renewal as something that operates against, rather than through, the will of voters.^[11]

Term limits for members of parliament are, comparatively, extremely unusual. The Venice Commission’s Report on Term Limits, Part II, adopted in 2019 after review of sixty-three countries, established that no European country had introduced such limits at that time; a 2009 Swiss initiative was rejected, and a French bill remained pending.^[12] The reasoning is straightforward: for the executive, term limits can prevent the entrenchment of power in one person; for parliament, the situation is materially different. The right to stand for election is protected under Article 3 of Protocol 1 to the ECHR and Article 25 ICCPR, and restrictions must be prescribed by law, pursue a legitimate aim, be necessary in a democratic society, and be non-discriminatory.^[13]

There is a further point the Government’s justification does not confront. The entrenchment of power in a political system is not primarily a function of how long any individual legislator sits. It is a function of the electoral system, of media pluralism, of institutional independence, and of the political economy of party financing. If those structural conditions remain unaddressed, entrenchment will continue to operate through different faces. A term limit is, at best, a symptomatic remedy for a structural problem. At worst, it is a rhetorical remedy for one, offered in place of the reforms that would actually change the underlying dynamic.

Termination of the mandate of the President of the Republic

The second measure is the most personally directed in the package. Article 34 of the transitional provisions provides that “on the day following the entry into force of the Seventeenth Amendment of the Fundamental Law, the mandate of the President of the Republic in office shall terminate.” A new President is then to be elected by Parliament for up to five years, or until the entry into force of a new Constitution.^[14] The general explanation invokes a “serious loss of confidence” and the “extraordinary mandate” of the two-thirds majority.^[15] The removal is not framed as a legal finding of misconduct. It is not the impeachment procedure of Article 13, under which the President may be removed for an intentional violation of the law by two-thirds vote with adjudication by the Constitutional Court.^[16] It is a direct constitutional termination, targeted at a specific incumbent by name of function.

The doctrinal difficulty is severe. Article 12(1) declares the person of the President inviolable, and the Fundamental Law provides a single procedure for premature termination of the mandate. The Seventeenth Amendment does not repeal impeachment; it circumvents it by amending the Fundamental Law itself so as to terminate the mandate of the specific incumbent. This is precisely the technique the European Court of Human Rights described in Baka v. Hungary as constitutional legislation “directed specifically against” a named office-holder. The Grand Chamber found that the premature termination of the Supreme Court President’s mandate through the Transitional Provisions of the 2011 Fundamental Law violated both Article 6 § 1 and Article 10 of the Convention.^[17] The central holding was that constitutional form does not immunise a Contracting State from Convention scrutiny when the substance of the measure is to remove a specific office-holder ahead of the statutory expiry of the mandate for reasons connected to the exercise of the office. The political direction from which the removal emanates is not, on that reasoning, a relevant variable.

Human Rights Watch has framed the point unambiguously: “The plans to remove the country’s president and the head of its constitutional court lack due process safeguards. Restoring the rule of law requires respecting due process.”^[18] Amnesty International Hungary has objected in similar terms.^[19] Even the Helsinki Committee, which considers the incumbent’s removal justifiable in principle, insists that the Government must set out in detail the specific grounds for removal and the reasons for preferring this route to impeachment.^[20] On the current draft, that requirement is not met.

A further, uncomfortable question follows. If the constitutionally required cooperation of the Head of State with the government of the day (that is, the exercise of the formal competences of the office such as the promulgation of statutes and their return on constitutional grounds) is treated as a disqualifying association when it attaches to the incumbent President, the standard must apply symmetrically. A restoration project cannot coherently disqualify one office-holder on grounds of past cooperation with a system while treating comparable forms of past involvement on the part of others as constitutionally irrelevant. If the rule is that past involvement disqualifies, the rule is either universal or it is ad personamunder another name. The Venice Commission, which will conduct a fast-track examination at the President’s request,^[21] will have to grapple with that dilemma more directly than the explanatory memorandum has done. The question of past involvement is even more interesting when we consider that Péter Magyar, the person now leading the restoration, himself spent twelve years in senior positions in state institutions and state-owned enterprises tied directly to Fidesz, that is, precisely the kind of association that, when attached to the President, is treated as disqualifying.

Restoration of the seventy-year retirement age for Constitutional Court judges

Article 3 of the draft replaces Article 24(8) of the Fundamental Law and provides that “the mandate of a member of the Constitutional Court shall terminate on the day on which he or she reaches the age of seventy years.”^[22] Article 35 provides that justices already over seventy on the day of entry into force lose their mandate on the first day of the following calendar month.

The substantive rule is defensible. A seventy-year age cap for Constitutional Court justices was established by the 1989 Act on the Constitutional Court, as part of the constitutional settlement of the democratic transition, and remained in force until it was abolished in December 2013 as part of a Fidesz-era intervention that allowed sitting justices to serve their full twelve-year term regardless of age. The Venice Commission’s practice would, in principle, accept its reintroduction as compatible with judicial independence, provided that it is applied prospectively and with appropriate transitional measures.^[23]

The transitional rule is another matter. Since December 2013, Constitutional Court justices in Hungary have served without an age cap and could complete their full twelve-year term regardless of age. The draft Seventeenth Amendment does not merely change an existing rule; it introduces a new one and applies it, at the same time, to sitting justices. Any justice who has already reached the age of seventy on the day of entry into force loses the mandate on the first day of the following month. The current President of the Constitutional Court, Péter Polt, aged seventy, would be removed by direct application of the new rule – alongside four constitutional judges.

The situation is comparable to the 2012 measure condemned by the CJEU in Case C-286/12 European Commission v Hungary. In Case C-286/12 Commission v Hungary, the Court of Justice held that the abrupt reduction of the retirement age for judges from seventy to sixty-two, without an adequate transitional period, constituted unjustified age discrimination contrary to Directive 2000/78/EC.^[24] Persons who had a legitimate expectation of remaining in office until seventy could not be forced out within a matter of months. We are facing the same issue here: the retroactive application of a new age limit to sitting officeholders through constitutional means, with only weeks of transition and no adequate accommodation of legitimate expectations.

Justices already over seventy would lose their mandate within, at most, a few weeks. The comparison with the mechanism condemned by the CJEU in 2012 is a legal parallel the drafters would have done well to anticipate. The Constitutional Court itself had articulated the same principle domestically in Decision 33/2012 (VII.17.) AB, which struck down the 2011 reduction of the judicial retirement age from 70 to 62 and held that any change in the upper age limit that shortens a sitting judge's expected tenure must be introduced gradually, with an adequate transitional period, so as not to undermine the irremovability that forms an essential element of judicial independence.

There is a further point of institutional honesty. Age is a formally neutral criterion, but in this transitional context it functions as a proxy for something else: the selection of individuals whose original appointments the current majority considers illegitimate. If the underlying concern is the manner of appointment rather than generational renewal of the Court, the more coherent method is to say so openly. The Helsinki Committee’s counter-proposal, which would target justices whose original election was itself procedurally deficient, rests on precisely that logic.^[25] Age discrimination law does not evaporate because the drafters would prefer a proxy.

A new Office for the Recovery and Protection of State Assets

Article 6 of the draft inserts a new Article 42, establishing a National Office for the Recovery and Protection of State Assets. The Office is described as independent, as a participant in the administration of justice acting as public prosecutor for the State’s criminal claim, with powers in relation to investigation and public accusation. Its President and Vice-Presidents are elected by Parliament by two-thirds majority for a six-year term. Detailed rules are referred to a cardinal statute.^[26]

The end pursued is legitimate. The European Commission repeatedly identifies strengthened anti-corruption enforcement as a precondition for the release of frozen cohesion funds, and Romania’s Direcția Națională Anticorupție has become a regional template.^[27] Concerns arise elsewhere. The constitutional provision assigns to a single institution investigatory and prosecutorial functions over a broadly defined category of “public assets” and “assets that once belonged to the State,” while deferring substantive detail to a cardinal statute. The Rule of Law Checklist expressly warns that broad and vaguely defined institutional powers, however well-intentioned, generate significant risks under the principles of legality, legal certainty and prohibition of arbitrariness.^[28]

An anti-corruption body created at constitutional level by one political majority, with the mandate of recovering assets attributable to the outgoing one, faces a structural credibility problem from the outset. Whether it becomes an instrument of the rule of law or one that requires the invocation of the rule of law to justify what it does will depend almost entirely on the implementing legislation: independence guarantees, judicial oversight, transparency in case selection, and appointment rules that go beyond a two-thirds majority of a single legislative moment.

Judicial self-government

Articles 4 and 5 reformulate Articles 25 and 26 of the Fundamental Law. Both the President of the National Office for the Judiciary (OBH) and the President of the Kúria are to be elected by Parliament on the proposal of the President of the Republic, from three candidates put forward by judges themselves under a cardinal law, by two-thirds majority. The draft introduces the possibility of recall on the initiative of judges themselves.^[29]

The substantive innovation is broadly consistent with the CJEU’s case law on judicial independence and with the Venice Commission’s long-standing recommendation that court leaders should not be appointed by the political branches alone. The specific design, however, raises questions. If the concern is that the current incumbents were installed through processes involving the political branches, the logical consequence should be a design in which the appointment of their successors is insulated from those branches, not one in which the removal of incumbents is entrusted to the political branches (through parliamentary approval) and the judiciary (through a high vote threshold for recall). The political branches retain a central role in appointment and gain a new mechanism to pressure incumbents. That is not the direction judicial-independence doctrine has been moving.

The Helsinki Committee identifies this element as the one that “raises the most serious problems.”^[30] The Committee accepts that the Kúria President’s removal is justifiable, but considers that entrusting it to a divided judiciary through a high vote threshold shifts political responsibility onto judges, invites internal conflicts a fragile institution cannot easily absorb, and could result in a leader remaining in post without the support of a majority of colleagues, an outcome that would neither restore the rule of law nor safeguard public confidence. Where restoration is genuinely required, the more coherent path is either a targeted constitutional provision terminating the mandate on stated grounds with procedural fairness, or an impeachment-type mechanism with adjudication by an independent body.

Cardinal-law reduction and independent regulatory bodies

Article 8 removes the requirement of a two-thirds supermajority from a substantial list of subject-matters, from environmental protection under Article P) to the salaries of members of the Government under Article 41(6). Article 9 abolishes the entire constitutional sub-heading on “Independent Regulatory Bodies,” and repeals Articles 37(4) to (5), which had restricted constitutional review of budget and tax laws, along with Article 39(3) on the constitutional definition of public funds.^[31]

The abolition of Article 37(4) to (5) is broadly welcomed as a positive restoration of full constitutional review over fiscal legislation. The removal of the narrow definition of “public funds” is likewise generally welcomed. The wholesale reduction of the scope of cardinal legislation, however, raises a methodological question. The 2011 extension of the two-thirds requirement was rightly criticised by the Venice Commission as an entrenchment technique.^[32] Reducing it is defensible in principle. In practice, it also removes procedural friction that has sometimes functioned as a safeguard against hasty legislation. That friction cuts both ways: it constrained the previous majority when it should have been constrained, and it can constrain future majorities when they should be constrained. A restoration approach faithful to the Rule of Law Checklist would identify, subject-matter by subject-matter, the reasons for retaining or lifting each supermajority requirement. The current draft proceeds by general subtraction.

The abolition of the constitutional status of independent regulatory bodies is separately troubling. The Helsinki Committee’s assessment is that this change “is not necessary for restoring the rule of law and should instead be debated and decided during the later, broader constitutional process.”^[33] Removing them from the constitutional text does not abolish them at the statutory level, but it subordinates their status to the ordinary legislative majority of the day. A future majority that wished to reshape them at will would face no constitutional obstacle. The long-term consequences will outlast a five-day consultation by decades.

Restructuring of public broadcasting and the media authority

The last measure is, strictly speaking, not contained solely in the draft Seventeenth Amendment itself. It was enacted by Parliament on 23 June 2026 as an amendment to the Media Act, adopted with 145 votes in favour and 39 against.  The connection is direct: the 17th Amendment’s abolition of the constitutional status of independent regulatory bodies operates in tandem with a wholesale statutory reorganisation of public broadcasting.

The reform terminates the mandates of the current members of the Media Council, of the Board of Trustees of the Public Service Foundation, and of the senior leadership of Duna Médiaszolgáltató and MTVA. It dissolves the two latter entities and creates in their place Hungarian Radio and Television Nonprofit Ltd. and the Hungarian News Agency Nonprofit Ltd. It establishes an Independent Public Media Board, six of whose members are nominated on a parity basis by governing and opposition parties and three by professional associations. It provides for the temporary supervision of public broadcasting by the Government during the transition.

This design presents two familiar problems. First, the immediate termination of the mandates of named officials. The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers has repeatedly emphasised that changes in the composition of media authorities should be effected through the ordinary end of mandates rather than premature termination.^[34] The principle was well founded when invoked against the 2010 reforms. It is not less well founded now. Second, the interim placement of public media under the direct supervision of the Government is a design that no serious media-independence framework would propose in normal circumstances. The justification here is transitional. The question the drafters have not answered is what mechanism prevents “transitional” from becoming a permanent feature of the landscape.

Procedural rule of law: consultation, timing and technique

Underlying each of the proposed measures is a common procedural question, and it is arguably the most important element of the entire assessment. The consultation ran from 22 to 27 June 2026: five days, including a weekend. Hungarian legislation on public participation requires a minimum of eight days for consultation on statutory drafts.^[35] The deadline set for a package of this constitutional magnitude falls short of even that ordinary threshold. Urgency arguments are familiar from the 2011 constitution-making period, when they were rightly criticised on the same procedural grounds by many of the same civil-society organisations objecting today.

The consultation mechanism itself deserves attention. The draft was made available for comments through a government email address. That is an improvement on legislative processes conducted behind closed doors, but it is not a substitute for the structured, methodologically transparent public participation that the Venice Commission and the OECD have developed as best practice. There is no publicly available methodology for how comments were categorised, weighted, or disposed of, and no record of which comments led to which changes in the text. Sending an email to a government address is a form of expression, not deliberation. It becomes deliberation only when the receiving institution demonstrates, publicly and methodically, how those expressions have affected its choices.

The Rule of Law Checklist is emphatic: restoration measures should be based on a comprehensive diagnosis of the reasons and consequences of regression, planned along short-term and long-term horizons, grounded in broad public participation, and above all, “the restoration of the rule of law does not necessarily justify the most radical measures if less radical measures can also achieve good results.”^[36] Angelika Nußberger, former ECtHR judge and long-standing member of the Venice Commission, has recently argued that the “hard limits” set by EU law and the “soft limits” of European constitutional best practice provide an Archimedean point from which to distinguish sustainable reforms from those that would exacerbate existing problems.^[37] Whether the Seventeenth Amendment, in its current form, can cross that line without introducing new sources of instability is the question a genuine consultation period would have been designed to answer.

Concluding observations

Nothing in the above is intended to defend the record of the institutions and office-holders that the Seventeenth Amendment targets. Some of the criticisms directed at the previous era have been well founded. The question is not whether reform is warranted, but whether the specific reforms tabled on 22 June 2026, taken together with the Sixteenth Amendment and the media law adopted the same week, are the reforms that best satisfy the standards which the rule of law requires of those who invoke it.

The ends of most of the measures are, in themselves, reconcilable with European rule-of-law standards. The means chosen for several of them replicate techniques against which the very institutions now invoked in their defence have consistently warned: the immediate termination of the mandate of an individual Head of State through a constitutional amendment; the immediate termination of judicial mandates by operation of a new retirement age without a proportionate transitional regime; the retroactive imposition of eligibility restrictions on the political opposition; the removal of senior judicial leaders through a mechanism that shifts responsibility onto the judiciary itself; the premature termination of the mandates of members of media regulatory bodies. Each is the mirror image of measures the Court of Justice, the ECtHR and the Venice Commission have criticised in the past. The principle established in Baka is not sensitive to the political direction from which the targeting emanates.

The procedural framework of the reform, a five-day consultation on a package of constitutional gravity, is the most difficult element to reconcile with the Rule of Law Checklist. Restoration of the rule of law is not merely a matter of substantive outcomes; it is a matter of demonstrating, through method, that the new order will not be built on the same procedural shortcuts as the old. The credibility of a restoration project rests on that demonstration and on nothing else.

The intellectual coherence of the entire enterprise depends on the consistency with which European standards are applied. If constitutional amendments directed at named individuals were problematic per se, they remain problematic when the individuals concerned are less politically sympathetic to their drafters. If retroactive term limits were objectionable in one direction, they are objectionable in the other. A rule of law that applies only to political opponents is not a rule of law. It is a rule of the majority of the moment, dressed in the vocabulary of the rule of law.

The Venice Commission’s fast-track examination will provide an important test of that consistency. Its opinion will be worth reading not only for its specific conclusions, but for what it says about the willingness of European institutions to apply their own standards symmetrically, irrespective of which two-thirds majority is invoking them. When a country undertakes a constitutional reset in the name of restoring the rule of law, the real test is not whether the substantive outcomes align with the preferences of one political camp or the other. It is whether the methods by which those outcomes are pursued would be accepted as legitimate if a future majority, of any political orientation, were to invoke them for its own purposes. A restoration in which only the roles change, but the standards themselves do not, is not a restoration. It is a redistribution. The distinction is not a matter of political taste. It is the distinction on which the rule of law depends.

^[1] Venice Commission, Opinion on the New Constitution of Hungary, CDL-AD(2011)016, 17 to 18 June 2011; Venice Commission, Opinion on the Fourth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary, CDL-AD(2013)012, 14 to 15 June 2013.

^[2] Magyarország Alaptörvényének tizenhatodik módosítása [Sixteenth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary] (adopted 15 June 2026, promulgated 19 June 2026) <https://njt.jog.gov.hu/jogszabaly/2026-16-04-00> accessed 5 July 2026.

^[3] Government of Hungary, Törvényjavaslat Magyarország Alaptörvényének tizenhetedik módosításáról [Bill on the Seventeenth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary]. Országgyűlés [National Assembly]. Retrieved July 5, 2026.

^[4] Government of Hungary, Társadalmi párbeszéd az Alaptörvény 17. módosításáról [Public consultation on the Seventeenth Amendment of the Fundamental Law] (public consultation, 22–27 June 2026) <https://egyeztetes.kormany.hu/egyeztetes/tarsadalmi-parbeszed-az-alaptorveny-17-modositasarol> accessed 5 July 2026.

^[5] Országgyűlés. (2026). 2026. évi XXI. törvény a médiaszolgáltatásokról és a tömegkommunikációról szóló 2010. évi CLXXXV. törvény, valamint az Országgyűlésről szóló 2012. évi XXXVI. törvény módosításáról [Act XXI of 2026 on the amendment of Act CLXXXV of 2010 on Media Services and Mass Communications and of Act XXXVI of 2012 on the National Assembly]. Nemzeti Jogszabálytár. Retrieved July 5, 2026, from https://net.jogtar.hu/jogszabaly?docid=A2600021.TV

^[6] Rodríguez-Pina, G. (2026, June 26). Operation Cleansing Fire: Hungary's new leader moves to break Orbán's entrenched power structure. EL PAÍS English. https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-06-26/operation-cleansing-fire-hungarys-new-leader-moves-to-break-orbans-entrenched-power-structure.html

^[7] European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission), The Updated Rule of Law Checklist, CDL-AD(2025)002, Opinion No 1210/2024, adopted at the 145th Plenary Session (Venice, 12–13 December 2025) <https://www.coe.int/en/web/venice-commission/-/cdl-ad-2025-002-e> accessed 5 July 2026.

^[8] Nußberger, A. (2026, June 18). Hungary and the Venice Commission: The value of advice given by an unwelcome friend in the past. Verfassungsblog. https://doi.org/10.59704/44dbe42f084b9b3a

^[9] Magyarország Alaptörvényének tizenhetedik módosításának tervezete [Draft Seventeenth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary] (submitted to the National Assembly on 4 July 2026), art 2 (replacing art XXIII of the Fundamental Law) and closing provision 36 (added by art 7).

^[10] Hungarian Helsinki Committee. (2026, June 28). The draft 17th Amendment to the Fundamental Law: Sometimes too much, sometimes too little, but improvable [Az újabb Alaptörvény-módosítás: olykor sok, máskor kevés, de javítható]. https://helsinki.hu/en/opinion-draft-17th-amendment-to-the-fundamental-law/

^[11] Government of Hungary, Magyarország Alaptörvényének tizenhetedik módosításának tervezete [Draft Seventeenth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary], Részletes Indokolás [Detailed Explanatory Memorandum] (submitted to the National Assembly, 4 July 2026) <https://egyeztetes.kormany.hu/egyeztetes/tarsadalmi-parbeszed-az-alaptorveny-17-modositasarol> accessed 5 July 2026

^[12] Venice Commission, Report on Term-Limits, Part II – Members of Parliament, CDL-AD(2019)007 (15–16 March 2019).

^[13] Ibid., paras 5 to 12.

^[14] Bill on the Seventeenth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary, transitional provision 34.

^[15] Draft Seventeenth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary - Detailed Explanatory Memorandum, commentary on Article 7.

^[16] Article 13, Fundamental Law of Hungary (2011).

^[17] Baka v Hungary App no 20261/12 (ECtHR, Grand Chamber, 23 June 2016) <https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-163113> accessed 5 July 2026.

^[18] Human Rights Watch. (2026, June 25). Hungary: Rushed constitutional changes undermine rule of law. https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/06/25/hungary-rushed-constitutional-changes-undermine-rule-of-law

^[19] Deconinck, C. (2026, June 24). Amnesty International criticises new Hungarian government over rule of law concerns. Brussels Signal. https://brusselssignal.eu/2026/06/amnesty-international-criticises-new-hungarian-government-over-rule-of-law-concerns/

^[20] Hungarian Helsinki Committee. (2026, June 28). The draft 17th Amendment to the Fundamental Law: Sometimes too much, sometimes too little, but improvable [Az újabb Alaptörvény-módosítás: olykor sok, máskor kevés, de javítható]. https://helsinki.hu/en/opinion-draft-17th-amendment-to-the-fundamental-law/

^[21] Zsiros, S. (2026, June 29). Venice Commission experts to investigate Magyar's push to remove Hungary's president. Euronews. https://www.euronews.com/2026/06/29/venice-commission-experts-to-investigate-magyars-push-to-remove-hungarys-president

^[22] Bill on the Seventeenth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary, Article 3.

^[23] Venice Commission, Rule of Law Checklist (2025); Venice Commission, Opinion no. 663/2012, CDL-AD(2012)001.

^[24] Case C-286/12 European Commission v Hungary (CJEU, 6 November 2012) ECLI:EU:C:2012:687.

^[25] Hungarian Helsinki Committee. (2026, June 28). The draft 17th Amendment to the Fundamental Law: Sometimes too much, sometimes too little, but improvable [Az újabb Alaptörvény-módosítás: olykor sok, máskor kevés, de javítható]. https://helsinki.hu/en/opinion-draft-17th-amendment-to-the-fundamental-law/

^[26] Bill on the Seventeenth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary, Article 6, inserting a new Article 42.

^[27] World Bank Group. (2017, June). Anti-corruption in Romania: The way forward (I. Radwan, A. Nastase, & M. Bubberman, Authors). Governance Practice, Europe and Central Asia Region. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/955101592834192808/pdf/Anti-corruption-in-Romania-the-way-forward.pdf

^[28] Venice Commission, Rule of Law Checklist, CDL-AD(2016)007 (revised 2025).

^[29] Bill on the Seventeenth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary, Articles 4 and 5.

^[30] Hungarian Helsinki Committee. (2026, June 28). The draft 17th Amendment to the Fundamental Law: Sometimes too much, sometimes too little, but improvable [Az újabb Alaptörvény-módosítás: olykor sok, máskor kevés, de javítható]. https://helsinki.hu/en/opinion-draft-17th-amendment-to-the-fundamental-law/

^[31] Bill on the Seventeenth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary, Articles 8 and 9.

^[32] European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission), Opinion on the Fourth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary (Opinion No 720/2013, CDL-AD(2013)012, adopted at the 95th Plenary Session, Venice, 14–15 June 2013) <https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-AD(2013)012-e> accessed 5 July 2026.

^[33] Hungarian Helsinki Committee. (2026, June 28). The draft 17th Amendment to the Fundamental Law: Sometimes too much, sometimes too little, but improvable [Az újabb Alaptörvény-módosítás: olykor sok, máskor kevés, de javítható]. https://helsinki.hu/en/opinion-draft-17th-amendment-to-the-fundamental-law/

^[34] Council of Europe, Committee of Ministers. (2012, February 15). Recommendation CM/Rec(2012)1 of the Committee of Ministers to member States on public service media governance.; Council of Europe, Committee of Ministers. (2000, December 20). Recommendation Rec(2000)23 of the Committee of Ministers to member States on the independence and functions of regulatory authorities for the broadcasting sector.

^[35] A jogszabályok előkészítésében való társadalmi részvételről szóló 2010. évi CXXXI. törvény [Act CXXXI of 2010 on Public Participation in the Preparation of Legislation], s 10.

^[36] Nußberger, A. (2026, June 18). Hungary and the Venice Commission: The value of advice given by an unwelcome friend in the past. Verfassungsblog. https://doi.org/10.59704/44dbe42f084b9b3a

^[37] Ibid.

References

A jogszabályok előkészítésében való társadalmi részvételről szóló 2010. évi CXXXI. törvény [Act CXXXI of 2010 on Public Participation in the Preparation of Legislation], s 10.

Baka v Hungary App no 20261/12 (ECtHR, Grand Chamber, 23 June 2016) <https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-163113> accessed 5 July 2026.

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