It’s been less than three months since the last parliamentary election in Hungary, and the country is already caught up in an unprecedented constitutional crisis.
While the new pro-Brussels government, led by PM Péter Magyar’s Tisza party, is throwing the rule of law and democratic norms out of the window to cement its power, the national conservative opposition party Fidesz has begun mobilizing supporters to fight back on the streets.
“Tisza crosses every boundary—human, moral, and rule-of-law. Hungarian voters did not give a mandate for this. Let us not let them! Demonstration on Thursday at 6 p.m., in front of the presidential palace,” wrote Fidesz leader and former PM Viktor Orbán on Facebook on Monday, July 6th.
The planned protest is specifically against a series of fast-tracked constitutional amendments that the Tisza government submitted to the Parliament, including measures to forcibly remove and replace the president of the republic, as well as the president of the Constitutional Court, along with several judges, before the end of their mandates.
The changes would also retroactively limit the mandates of members of parliament to three terms or 12 years, a move completely unprecedented in Europe, clearly designed to eliminate about half of all right-wing opposition MPs.
“We consider these proposals scandalous. This is the tenth parliamentary term since the regime change [of 1989]; the government has held a two-thirds majority on six occasions, yet no one has ever abused their power to change the constitution in this manner,” said Gergely Gulyás, the leader of Fidesz’s parliamentary faction on Monday while announcing the protest.
“Part of this is the humiliation of the President of the Republic—the humiliation of the institution itself,” Guyás added, explaining why the demonstration will be held at the Sándor Palace, the seat of the Hungarian president.
Tisza’s proposals have led to widespread criticism not only from the conservative opposition but also from several leftist civil rights NGOs. Amnesty International, for instance, said the planned removal of President Tamás Sulyok undermines the right to fair trial, while TASZ, one of Hungary’s oldest civil rights advocacies, said the MPs’ term limits would violate both the freedom to stand for election and voters’ right to freely elect their representatives.
Given the seriousness of the situation, the Venice Commission—Europe’s preeminent authority on constitutional law—has announced it would examine the proposals under a fast-tracked procedure. However, there’s no guarantee that the Tisza government will adhere to its ruling, given that PM Magyar refused to even meet the Venice Commission’s delegation at first.
The only ones to stay conspicuously silent are the EU institutions themselves. Neither the EU Commission nor the European Parliament has said a single word about the obvious rule of law violations, despite taking every chance to criticize and sanction the previous conservative government for far less. Brussels’ double standards were made even more apparent when the EU Parliament simply refused to allow even a discussion about the Tisza government’s proposals in the plenary.
Meanwhile, the new government is busy dismantling the ideological hinterland of the right-wing opposition as well, including conservative media, foundations, and research institutions. One of the biggest blows is the recently announced closure of MCC, one of Europe’s largest networks of private educational and research institutions that provided scholarships and talent development programs to thousands of students, as well as funded several cutting-edge think tanks, including MCC Brussels.
“What is the point of shutting down 30 locations, sending away 8,000 students, dismissing hundreds of teachers, halting research, dismantling institutes, disbanding debate groups, revoking international scholarships, taking away dormitory places, and cancelling domestic and international camps?” commented Balázs Orbán, former director of MCC.
“Senseless destruction, devastation, and revenge—the victims of which are not politicians, but young people, parents, and educators; in other words, ordinary, everyday people,” he added.