Part I — Situation overview

On 13 July 2026 the National Assembly adopted the 17th amendment to the Fundamental Law with 139 votes in favour and 6 against; the amendment terminates the mandate of the sitting President of the Republic on the day following its entry into force. Speaker Ágnes Forsthoffer signed the text that same evening and sent it to Tamás Sulyok — under the Fundamental Law, the head of state has five days from receipt to sign it and order its promulgation. The Sándor Palace answered press questions with a single sentence: “The powers and possibilities of the President of the Republic are regulated by the Fundamental Law; the head of state — as before — acts accordingly.” Meanwhile the international front has also opened: Gergely Gulyás, the Fidesz parliamentary group leader who resigned the previous day, announced that he would turn to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (ECtHR — the judicial forum of the Council of Europe, not an institution of the European Union) over the amendment, while the Fidesz–KDNP members of the European Parliament called on the European Commission to take a position, which it has so far not done.

The stakes are what the Fundamental Law offers no ready script for. Tamás Sulyok can move in four directions: he signs the amendment; he signs it but attaches a statement of protest; he turns to the Constitutional Court — exclusively on grounds of public-law invalidity, that is, a procedural defect in the adoption, because the body may not review an amendment to the Fundamental Law on substance —; or he resigns. The fate of the earlier presidential petition is not encouraging: seven constitutional judges had themselves recused on grounds of being affected, so the body could not even place the case on its agenda, and the Venice Commission — the advisory body of the Council of Europe made up of constitutional lawyers — will consider the head of state’s submission not under an urgent procedure but only in October. If within the five days the president neither signs nor resigns, then according to prime minister Péter Magyar’s announcement the procedure for removal from office begins: this requires a secret ballot of two-thirds of the members of parliament, and from the initiation of the procedure the president may not exercise his powers — according to the public-law sources of 24.hu, this path could lead to “unprecedented legal wallowing”, to constitutional uncertainty not seen since the regime change.

MIAK’s reading: the promulgation phase is not a legal-technical footnote but the real quality test of the constitutional transition. MIAK’s analysis of yesterday dealt with the adoption; today the question is whether the system can close, under its own rules, a situation for which the rules are patchy — and here the rule-of-law yardstick is not speed but the documented, reasoned, predictable conduct of the procedure.

Part II — Literature foundation

Before turning to MIAK’s proposals, it is worth fixing the interpretive frame. The central concept of The Concept of Law by H. L. A. Hart (20th-century British legal philosopher, a defining figure of the Oxford school of jurisprudence) is the rule of recognition: the ultimate rule of a legal system, which says what counts as valid law — this rule, however, is not a paragraph but the actual, shared practice of courts, offices and citizens. The present situation tests exactly this: if one constitutional actor in the promulgation chain refuses to cooperate, the question of validity shifts from the normative text to practice — to what the institutions accept as law. According to The Authority of Law by Joseph Raz (Israeli–British legal philosopher, one of the most cited authors of rule-of-law theory), the strength of the rule of law lies in procedural virtues: law can guide the conduct of its addressees if the rules are public, clear, fixed in advance, and their application is predictable — the handling of a constitutional crisis is therefore rule-of-law-conforming because every step of it rests on a rule knowable in advance, not because of who wins. The detailed literature treatment — by author — can be found in the 6.4 Literature in detail section.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures for the rule-of-law handling of the promulgation stalemate.

3.1 A public constitutional timetable for the promulgation phase (within 5 working days)

MIAK proposes that the government and the National Assembly — jointly or separately — publish, still before the five-day signature deadline expires, a public constitutional timetable: under which scenario (signature, petition to the Constitutional Court, resignation, fruitless expiry of the deadline) which provision of the Fundamental Law applies, with what deadline, and which institution acts. This is not legislation but procedural transparency: under the programme point on strengthening checks and balances (A6), institutional functioning is verifiable when the legal basis of the steps is knowable in advance, not constructed after the fact. The Razian rule-of-law yardstick (see 6.4.2) is exactly this: the handling of a crisis situation should also proceed along rules fixed in advance and public.

3.2 The removal procedure as a very last resort — with procedural self-restraint (counted from the expiry of the deadline)

Removal from office is a constitutional instrument, but according to MIAK it is legitimate only as a very last step: if within the five-day deadline the head of state has neither signed, nor turned to the Constitutional Court, nor resigned. If the president turns to the body invoking public-law invalidity, the fate of the petition must be awaited before initiating the removal procedure — running the two procedures in parallel would create exactly the appearance that the majority decides by hollowing out the avenue of legal remedy. MIAK also proposes that the full reasoning of the removal motion be public: the secret ballot is a rule of the Fundamental Law, but the publicity of the reasons does not conflict with it, and it follows the logic of the programme point on judicial transparency (I1). The announcement of the Strasbourg complaint, in turn, should be treated not as an attack but as the normal functioning of the system of legal remedies: under the doctrine of principled pragmatism (KP4), recourse to international forums is not in itself a question of loyalty.

3.3 Auditable precedent documentation: a constitutional log of every step of the transition (continuous, first publication within 30 days)

What is happening now will be a precedent — one that any future two-thirds majority can invoke. MIAK therefore proposes that timeline-based, public documentation be produced of every constitutional step of the transition: who acted, when, on what legal basis, with what deadline, and where the procedure departed from the timetable published in advance. This constitutional log provides the factual material of the constitutional “stress test” (I10), and this is what makes it possible for the Venice Commission’s October opinion, or a possible Strasbourg procedure, to examine what happened on documented facts rather than on memory and statements. In the Hartian frame (see 6.4.1) this serves to keep institutional practice — which is ultimately the bearer of validity — verifiable.

The common principle of the three proposals: in a stalemate, the rule of law does not require that no decision be made, but that the path of the decision be knowable in advance, documented and accountable after the fact — the strength of the majority mandate shows precisely in the majority having no need for procedural shortcuts.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Public law, institutions With a timetable fixed in advance, the stalemate closes in a predictable channel; the precedent is documented and auditable If removal and constitutional-court procedures run in parallel, a lasting legitimacy dispute surrounds the new head of state
International standing A documented, self-restrained procedure strengthens the Hungarian position before the Venice Commission and the ECtHR If government communication sweeps aside the procedural objections with camp logic, the rule-of-law disputes reopen in the negotiations on EU funds
Society, public trust Public reasoning reduces the sense of “winner takes all” among the losing side’s voters too In the event of protracted constitutional uncertainty, the credibility of the whole transition suffers in citizens’ eyes

The main matter for consideration is the relationship between time and legitimacy. In favour of quick closure: the uncertainty around the head-of-state post spreads to an ever wider constitutional area with every day — from laws awaiting promulgation to appointments. In favour of waiting: the initiation of the removal procedure entails the immediate suspension of the exercise of powers, and is therefore an irreversible step — if the procedural objections later prove well-founded, the injury can no longer be remedied. The proposal package handles this tension by not prohibiting speed, but attaching a public reasoning requirement to every accelerating step — the tipping point is where a procedural shortcut remains without reasoning.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth tracking? (proposed KPIs)

MIAK proposes tracking four key performance indicators (KPIs):

  • Legal-basis publication rate: of the constitutional steps of the transition, for how many was the public identification of the legal basis and the deadline published in advance — target: 100%.
  • Observance of procedural order: whether a removal procedure was initiated while a constitutional-court petition was pending — target: no.
  • Publicity of international response documents: itemised, public publication of the Hungarian responses to the Venice Commission’s October opinion and to a possible Strasbourg procedure within 60 days.
  • Quality of the succession procedure: if a new head of state is elected, the existence of a public hearing of the candidate and the number of consultation days between nomination and vote.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s message to the decision-maker: the promulgation stalemate is not an opponent to be defeated but a procedure to be conducted. The government majority acts well if, still before the deadline expires, it publishes a public constitutional timetable, applies the removal procedure as a very last resort, after awaiting legal remedy, and documents every step of the transition. Of MIAK’s foundational values, transparency and accountability prevail here: transparency because a legal basis for the constitutional steps that is knowable in advance is the only antidote to either side describing the transition as an arbitrary exercise of power; and accountability because the present majority is responsible for the precedent now being created — the documented procedure is what allows a yardstick to be set before a future two-thirds majority.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 The press framing by spectrum

The public-affairs and left-liberal band analyses the mechanics of the stalemate. Relying on public-law sources, 24.hu explores the three possible paths and the “legal no-man’s-land” scenario (“Unprecedented legal wallowing and chaos may come if Sulyok does not sign the constitutional amendment removing him”), 444.hu highlights the Sándor Palace’s evasive answer and the narrowness of the Constitutional Court’s room for manoeuvre (“The Sándor Palace is obfuscating…”), while HVG runs on two threads: alongside the one-sentence palace answer it also raises the inconsistency of the mandate restriction — if eligibility for the National Assembly can be limited after 12 years, why not the European Parliament and municipal mandates (“If the eligibility of members of parliament is restricted…”).

In the public-affairs television band, ATV put the legal-remedy thread on its front page: Gergely Gulyás’s announcement that he would turn to the Strasbourg court over the amendment. In the pro-government-conservative band, Magyar Nemzet frames the international dimension — under the title “Brussels’s answer has arrived” it in fact analyses the European Commission’s silence, and reports the call by the Fidesz–KDNP MEPs, according to which if Brussels speaks up only according to political interest, the rule of law becomes a “political weapon”. Mandiner did not rank the topic among its highlighted themes on this day. Népszava signalled on its front page the Constitutional Court’s “acquiescence” in the transition (title-level reference only — the portal’s article page was not machine-readable).

6.2 Facts and data

  • Under Article S(2) of the Fundamental Law, “the Speaker of the National Assembly shall sign the Fundamental Law or the amendment of the Fundamental Law and send it to the President of the Republic. The President of the Republic shall sign the Fundamental Law or the amendment of the Fundamental Law within five days of receipt and shall order its promulgation in the official gazette.” (Fundamental Law of Hungary, text in force on 17 April 2026)
  • Article 12(3) lists resignation and removal from office among the grounds for termination of the mandate; under Article 13, the removal procedure may be initiated by one-fifth of the members of parliament, its initiation requires a secret ballot of two-thirds of the members, and from the adoption of that decision until the conclusion of the procedure the president may not exercise his powers.
  • The National Assembly adopted the 17th amendment to the Fundamental Law on 13 July 2026 with 139 votes in favour and 6 against (the two-thirds threshold in the 199-member National Assembly is 134 votes).
  • The Constitutional Court may not review an amendment to the Fundamental Law on substance, only compliance with the procedural requirements governing its adoption.
  • Hungary’s rule-of-law indicator according to the World Bank’s governance indicators (World Bank WGI 2024, rule of law): +0.35.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Justice (programme points) — the constitutional “stress test” (I10) and judicial transparency (I1) provide the frame of the procedural audit of the transition;
  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — strengthening checks and balances (A6) and measuring democratic resilience (A9) are the tools for managing the precedent risk;
  • Foreign policy (programme points) — handling the Strasbourg and Brussels threads on the yardstick of principled pragmatism (KP4): international forums are not adversaries but parts of the system.

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 H. L. A. Hart: The Concept of Law

According to Hart’s theory, the foundation of a legal system is not a supreme command but the rule of recognition: the ultimate yardstick, living in practice, by which courts, offices and citizens identify what counts as valid law. The peculiarity of this ultimate rule is that its own validity can no longer be derived from a higher rule — it is sustained by the actual, concordant practice of the institutions. Translated to the present Hungarian situation: as long as every actor in the promulgation chain cooperates in the accustomed way, the question of validity does not even arise; if, however, the head of state refuses to sign, the question — what is the valid law? — is decided not by the text but by which interpretation the institutions (the National Assembly, the Constitutional Court, the courts, the public administration) accept and follow in practice. Precisely for this reason, every step that divides institutional practice is risky: parallel, mutually cancelling procedures bring not a legal victory but the shaking of the rule of recognition.

📖 Source: H. L. A. Hart: The Concept of Law (the work is under copyright, so we reference it by paraphrase, without verbatim quotation)

6.4.2 Joseph Raz: The Authority of Law

Raz gives the concept of the rule of law a deliberately modest but accountable content: law fulfils its function if it is capable of guiding the conduct of its addressees — and for that the rules must be public, clear, fixed in advance and relatively stable, while individual decisions must be made within the framework of open, stable general rules. For Raz the rule of law does not guarantee good law — but it works as a yardstick: the more decisions are made after the fact, case by case, unpredictably, the less we can speak of the rule of law, regardless of which political direction exercises power. In the promulgation stalemate this means: the rule-of-law surplus lies not in the majority renouncing its instruments, but in fixing, in advance and publicly, the order and conditions of their application — this is what MIAK’s proposal translates into the form of the constitutional timetable and the constitutional log.

📖 Source: Joseph Raz: The Authority of Law (the work is under copyright, so we reference it by paraphrase, without verbatim quotation)

6.5 International comparison

For weighing the chances of the Strasbourg route, the closest Hungarian precedent is the case of Baka v. Hungary: in 2016 the ECtHR found that the premature termination of the mandate of the President of the Kúria by constitutional-level regulation — without the possibility of legal remedy — violated the Convention. The analogy, however, is limited: András Baka was a judicial leader to whom the fair-trial guarantees of the European Convention on Human Rights applied directly; the assessment of the head-of-state office is more uncertain terrain, and the ECtHR’s room for manoeuvre against a constitutional amendment is also contested. The Polish constitutional-court crisis of 2015–2016, in turn, is an example of how the politicisation of the promulgation-publication stage (the government then refused to publish constitutional-court rulings) institutionalised a dual legal interpretation for years — exactly the scenario the public constitutional timetable is meant to prevent. The lesson holds in both directions: circumventing procedural guarantees backfires even when the declared aim is the restoration of the rule of law.

Justice

  • I10 — Constitutional “stress test”
  • I4 — Protection of judicial independence
  • I1 — Judicial transparency

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A6 — Strengthening checks and balances
  • A9 — Spin-dictatorship prevention index

Foreign policy

  • KP4 — Principled pragmatism doctrine

Proposed new programme point: Constitutional transition log — mandatory, timeline-based public documentation of the steps of constitutional transitions — for the Transparency and anti-corruption policy area.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 15 July 2026 — topic 1):

Knowledge-base references (literature):

  • 📖 H. L. A. Hart: The Concept of Law
  • 📖 Joseph Raz: The Authority of Law
  • 📖 Fundamental Law of Hungary (text in force on 17 April 2026) — official legal source

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Justice (programme points; programme point ID: I10, I4, I1)
  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A6, A9)
  • MIAK policy area: Foreign policy (programme points; programme point ID: KP4)
  • MIAK press monitor, 15 July 2026 — topic 1, score: 95/100

Additional public data sources:

  • World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) 2024 — rule of law indicator
  • ECtHR, Baka v. Hungary (application no. 20261/12, Grand Chamber, 2016)

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