Published: June 02, 2026, 05:06 UTC
Hungary’s new PM threatens to oust Orbán-era president — a constitutional clash with EU consequences
Péter Magyar won a landslide to end 16 years of Viktor Orbán’s rule. Now he is trying to remove Tamás Sulyok, the president installed by the old regime — and Sulyok is refusing to go quietly. The stand-off could determine whether Hungary’s democratic renewal succeeds or stalls before it begins.
When Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party swept to power in Hungary’s April elections, ending Viktor Orbán’s 16-year grip on the country, the outcome was widely celebrated — in Budapest, in Brussels, and across European capitals that had grown exhausted by Orbán’s endless battles with the rule of law. The election was free. The mandate was clear. For the first time in a generation, Hungary looked like it might pull itself back from the edge of authoritarianism.
But elections change governments. They do not automatically change states. And the state Orbán built — a constitution rewritten to concentrate power, key institutions packed with loyalists, a presidency occupied by a man who owes his position entirely to the defeated regime — does not surrender simply because the voters have spoken.
That is the reality Péter Magyar now confronts. On June 1, less than a month after being sworn in as prime minister, he announced that his government will amend the constitution to remove President Tamás Sulyok, who has refused demands to step aside. The stand-off has become the first serious test of whether Hungary’s new leadership can translate electoral victory into actual governing power.
The man who won’t leave
Tamás Sulyok was installed as Hungary’s president in February 2024, after Katalin Novák resigned in disgrace over her role in a child sex abuse pardon scandal. Sulyok was not directly elected. Under Hungary’s system, the president is chosen by parliament, and at the time parliament was controlled by Orbán’s Fidesz party. Sulyok was a Fidesz loyalist elevated to a position that, while largely ceremonial under Hungary’s constitutional framework, retains significant blocking powers.
The president can refer laws back to parliament for reconsideration and can forward legislation to the constitutional court for review. These are not veto powers in the American sense, but they are slowdown powers — and in a government trying to dismantle 16 years of constitutional engineering, slowdown is a form of resistance.
Sulyok has made clear he intends to serve out his full five-year term. When Magyar set a resignation deadline of May 31, Sulyok ignored it. When they met on June 1, Sulyok again refused to step down, issuing a statement that “the constitutional crisis situation emerging as a result deepens the social divisions and damages the international judgement of Hungarian democracy.”
Magyar’s response was blunt. In a post on X, he wrote: “Tamás Sulyok has never stood up for the vulnerable, for those under attack, or for the rule of law.” He has previously described the president as “unworthy of representing the unity of the Hungarian nation” following the seismic political shift of April’s election.
Two-thirds is enough
The key fact that makes this confrontation possible — and also dangerous — is Magyar’s parliamentary majority. The Tisza Party won a two-thirds supermajority in the National Assembly, the same threshold Orbán used to rewrite Hungary’s constitution in 2011. Under normal circumstances, a two-thirds majority is supposed to enable decisive governance. In Hungary, it has a darker connotation: it was the instrument Orbán used to dismantle checks and balances.
Now Magyar plans to use the same mechanism to undo what Orbán built. Amending the constitution to remove the president requires the two-thirds majority, and Magyar has it. He told reporters the process would take roughly a month.
Fidesz has called Magyar’s demand an “unlawful ultimatum,” which is a peculiar complaint coming from a party that spent 16 years treating the constitution as a clay vessel to be reshaped at will. Orbán himself stepped down as a member of parliament in April, a gesture that was widely read as an admission of defeat. But his allies remain embedded across Hungary’s institutions — the judiciary, the media regulatory authority, the prosecution service, and, for now, the presidency.
The EU dimension
The stand-off carries implications well beyond Budapest. Last week, the European Union signalled that reforms spearheaded by Magyar’s government could soon unlock €16.4 billion in frozen funding — money Brussels held back precisely because of the democratic backsliding that occurred under Orbán.
Sulyok has claimed that the constitutional clash could threaten the unlocking of these funds. Whether this is a genuine concern or a negotiating tactic is difficult to determine. What is certain is that the EU is watching Hungary more closely than at any point in the last decade, and any sign of political instability — even a manufactured one — could delay the disbursement.
Magyar has rejected the idea that removing Sulyok would affect EU funding. The reforms Brussels is looking for — judicial independence, media freedom, anti-corruption measures — do not depend on who occupies the presidency. But Sulyok’s argument has a surface plausibility that makes it dangerous: a constitutional crisis in a country that just emerged from an authoritarian period does not inspire confidence in Brussels or anywhere else.
What the president can actually do
It is worth being precise about what Sulyok can and cannot do if he stays. Hungary’s presidency is not the French or American model. The president does not command the military, set foreign policy, or veto legislation outright. But the power to refer laws to the constitutional court is real. If Sulyok sends every piece of Magyar’s reform agenda to the court for review — and the court is still packed with Orbán appointees — he can slow the government’s program to a crawl.
On June 1, Sulyok demonstrated he intends to exercise whatever powers he has. He announced several military appointments via Facebook, a small act but a pointed one: the president was asserting his role in the very hours that the prime minister was trying to remove him.
The deeper question
Magyar’s push to remove Sulyok is not just about one man. It is about whether a democratic transition can succeed when the institutional architecture of the previous regime remains intact. Orbán did not just win elections. He rewrote the rules so thoroughly that even losing an election would not automatically cede power. The presidency is one pillar of that architecture. The constitutional court is another. The media authority is a third.
Magyar has also proposed a constitutional amendment to limit any prime minister to eight years in power — a measure that would prevent any future Orbán-like figure from entrenching themselves the way Orbán did. It is a sign that the new government is thinking not just about winning power, but about keeping power from being abused again. But that long-term project will be harder if the new government spends its first year fighting a constitutional war with a holdover president.
For now, the path is clear: Magyar will amend the constitution, remove Sulyok, and install a president aligned with the new order. Sulyok will fight it with every procedural weapon available. Fidesz will accuse the government of authoritarian overreach. The EU will watch nervously.
One month, Magyar says. That is how long it will take to know whether Hungary’s democratic renewal is real, or whether the old regime’s institutional grip is stronger than the April election suggested.