Hungary Enacts Eight-Year Cap on Prime Ministers After Orbán Defeat

Hungary’s parliament approved a constitutional amendment on Monday that limits the total time any prime minister may serve to eight years. The move comes just two months after opposition leader Péter Magyar defeated Viktor Orbán, who had ruled for 16 consecutive years, and it is meant to block Orbán from running again because he already has far more than eight years in office overall.

Magyar’s Tisza party won more than a two-thirds majority in the April election, giving it the power to change the constitution without support from other parties. The day after that victory, Magyar pledged to cap prime ministerial tenure at eight cumulative years. Under the new rule, anyone who has served more than eight years as prime minister since May 2, 1990 cannot be elected again, and an incumbent must leave office once reaching that limit, even if the terms were not consecutive.

The amendment passed by 135 votes to 50, with six abstentions. Magyar’s party voted as a bloc in favor, while Orbán’s Fidesz opposed it, arguing that any term limit would undermine “the will of the people.”

When he formally presented the proposal on May 26, Magyar said, “Unlimited power always ends, in every democratic system, in a loss of restraint. From a certain point on, there is no longer a distinction between the interests of the state, those of the party and those of the leader, and every elected official must be made to think about his successor.” He said the change is an important first step in his promised overhaul to restore the rule of law and rebalance power among state institutions. The amendment does not make Orbán’s return impossible, but it would require a future two-thirds parliamentary majority to remove the cap. The same vote also clears the way to dissolve the “Sovereignty Protection Office,” which the opposition and rights groups say was used to smear critics as serving “foreign interests.”