Hungarian President Tamás Sulyok agreed to step down on 18 July 2026 after signing a constitutional amendment passed by Prime Minister Péter Magyar's Tisza party that terminated his presidency with immediate effect (Reuters; The Guardian).

The amendment, Hungary's seventeenth, cited society's "serious loss of confidence" in Sulyok. It was formally submitted to Parliament on 20 May 2026 as bill irom43/00051/00051, addressed to Speaker Ágnes Forsthoffer. During parliamentary debate on 7 July 2026, the measure was referred to as "lex Sulyok," and the Parliamentary Journal from that session characterized it as a legal modification contrary to Hungarian constitutionality and universal rule of law. The amendment cleared parliament on or shortly before 13 July 2026, at which point Sulyok was given a five-day deadline to sign it or face formal removal proceedings (Euronews). He signed on 18 July.

Sulyok, a former constitutional court judge elected president in early 2024 by lawmakers from Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party, called the amendment "a watershed in Hungary's constitutional democracy" and warned it had harmed the rule of law. Orbán, who governed Hungary for 16 years before being ousted by Magyar's Tisza party in an April 2026 election landslide, condemned the reforms on Facebook: "Tyranny is no longer a threat but reality. If this could be done to the president, tomorrow, no one will be safe."

The amendment's scope extends well beyond Sulyok's removal. It imposes a 12-year term limit on Hungarian lawmakers and sets a retirement age of 70 for constitutional court judges, a provision that forces court president Péter Polt, an Orbán ally, to step down. Fidesz has faced a string of high-profile resignations and declining public support since its April defeat. Magyar had publicly accused Sulyok of being one of Hungary's least popular politicians in the lead-up to the amendment's introduction (Reuters).

Tisza holds a two-thirds parliamentary supermajority, giving it unilateral authority to amend the constitution and pass any legislation. Magyar announced that Speaker Ágnes Forsthoffer will assume the role of interim president from Monday, 20 July 2026. Parliament will subsequently elect a new president to serve until a new constitution takes effect or for a maximum of five years.

The parliamentary debate over the amendment spanned at least three recorded sessions within the 2026–2030 legislative cycle: 22 June, 29 June, and 7 July 2026.

The broader context here is a post-election constitutional restructuring executed at speed. Tisza's supermajority has moved within roughly three months of taking office to remove an opposition-aligned president, impose term limits on lawmakers, and force the retirement of a constitutional court president appointed under the previous government. Each of these measures is individually constitutional under Hungary's amendment procedures. Taken together, they amount to a rapid consolidation of institutional control across the presidency, the legislature, and the judiciary, carried out through the formal mechanisms of constitutional law rather than by extra-legal means. That distinction matters for how the reforms are evaluated under domestic and European rule-of-law frameworks, even as the substance draws sharp criticism from Fidesz and from Sulyok himself.

Sulyok's warning about rule-of-law harm and Orbán's "tyranny" framing reflect a genuine political contest over the legitimacy of using supermajority power to restructure institutions whose composition still reflects the prior governing era. The counterargument from Tisza is equally clear in the amendment's text: the invocation of public confidence, the term limits, and the judicial retirement age are framed as corrective measures against the entrenchment that characterized Fidesz's 16 years in power. Hungary's parliament will now elect a successor president under these new constitutional parameters, with the interim period beginning on 20 July.