Part I — Situation overview

On 11 September 2026 Mi Hazánk likewise submitted its five constitutional-judge candidates for the vacant posts; the candidates of Tisza, which holds the government majority, had become known a day earlier. The governing party’s candidates are: Nóra Chronowski, constitutional lawyer and university professor, doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA); Miklós Ligeti, criminal lawyer, legal director of Transparency International in Hungary; András György Kovács, presiding judge of a panel at the Curia, administrative lawyer; Árpád Gábor Orosz, former head of the civil-law division of the Curia; and Zsolt Szomora, university professor at the University of Szeged. The Mi Hazánk list features Tamás Bánovics, Csaba Cservák, Péter Laky-Takács, Ákos Pápai and Jenő Szmodis. The candidates are heard on Monday by the competent parliamentary committee, and the House votes on Tuesday morning. The Fidesz group has announced that it will not take part in the election. The public-law basis: constitutional judges are elected by Parliament with the votes of two-thirds of MPs — they are not appointed by the government — the mandate runs for twelve years, and an elected constitutional judge cannot legally be given instructions in the exercise of their office. The Constitutional Court is also not a second instance above the Curia: it exercises norm control, that is, it examines the constitutionality of legislation and — in the case of a constitutional complaint — of judicial decisions.

The matter has a background, and that is what gives it its real stake. At the 2026 election Tisza won 141 of the 199 seats (70.85 per cent), Fidesz–KDNP 52, Mi Hazánk 6 — that is, the 133 seats needed for a two-thirds majority are in the hands of a single parliamentary group. The body has fifteen seats; the five posts to be filled at once are therefore a third of its membership. In recent months several major personnel decisions have provoked debate: the selection of the president of the National Asset Recovery and Asset Protection Office (NVVH), where Miklós Ligeti lost out to Anna Unger, and the July episode when the majority rejected András Schiffer’s constitutional-judge candidacy. The selection of the Prosecutor General is running in parallel: the post has had to be filled since Gábor Bálint Nagy’s departure on 25 August, nomination is the competence of the President of the Republic — András Baka — election requires a two-thirds parliamentary majority, and the mandate runs for nine years. Here too a rule change has taken place: the candidate no longer has to be a prosecutor, it is enough to be a lawyer. András Baka has indicated that he does not consult with political actors, and in recent days he also made his own asset declaration public.

MIAK’s reading: the debate now under way suffers from conceptual confusion, because it mixes two different questions. One is the professional suitability of the candidates — on this, judging by the legal profession’s statements so far, there is no substantive dispute; the legal scholar Péter Hack, for instance, expressly called the five candidates outstanding. The other is the procedure of selection, and Hack’s criticism is aimed precisely here: the regulation that was criticised for years has still not changed, that is, a two-thirds majority can continue to fill constitutional-judge seats alone, without consensual nomination. This is not a breach of law — it is a valid constitutional procedure. But the durability of an institution is not decided by whether today’s majority acted lawfully; it is decided by what the rule would permit another majority to do. Filling five seats at once sharpens this question, not the question of who the candidates are.

Part II — Foundations in the literature

The present situation can be interpreted from three sources. The official explanatory note to Article 24 of the Fundamental Law of Hungary states that the members of the Constitutional Court derive their mandate from Parliament, which elects the members of the body “with broad consensus, by the votes of two-thirds of the Members of the National Assembly” — that is, the express purpose of the two-thirds threshold was to compel consensus, and to this are added the twelve-year mandate and the prohibition on party membership and political activity as constitutional guarantees of independence. The political scientist Mihály Bihari, a former constitutional judge, documents in his study of the constitutional process of the Hungarian regime change that the bill on the Constitutional Court was an expressly named subject of the National Round Table negotiations — the institution is therefore not the creation of a single political force but of a negotiated agreement. The French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville, the first great analyst of nineteenth-century American democracy, adds in Democracy in America the consideration that looks behind formal lawfulness: he does not dispute the right of the majority but argues that without limits all power — including that of the majority — becomes dangerous. The detailed treatment of the literature — by author, with quotations — is in section 6.4 Literature in detail.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures. None of them seeks to postpone Tuesday’s vote, and none of them concerns the persons of the candidates.

3.1 Public candidate hearings and a scored suitability list published in advance (by the Prosecutor General election)

The selection of the Prosecutor General is still ahead, so there is time to create a procedural rule before the next two-thirds personnel decision. MIAK proposes that the committee hearing be mandatorily public and recorded for every two-thirds public-law office — with live broadcast and minutes available afterwards — and that the hearing be preceded by a suitability criteria list, published in advance and scored. The list should cover coverage of the legal fields (constitutional law, criminal law, administrative law, civil law, fundamental rights), the measurable elements of the professional record, and the aspects of the conflict-of-interest examination. This does not create a new institution; it applies the logic of the A6 programme point on strengthening checks and balances to selection: the aim is not to take the decision away from the parliamentary majority but to make the decision assessable after the event. The “broad consensus” appearing in the explanatory note to the Fundamental Law (see 6.4.2) cannot be compelled by the two-thirds threshold at the current seat ratios — but if the procedure is public and scored, at least verifiability takes the place of consensus.

3.2 Mandatory publication of the reasons for nomination and the fixing of the nomination procedure in the House Rules (by the end of the current session)

Today the reasoning behind a nomination appears as a political communication in a social-media post, and the criteria — probity, integrity, independence, professional record, coverage of legal fields — cannot afterwards be compared with the candidates’ actual curricula vitae. MIAK proposes that by the end of the current session the nomination reasoning become a document fixed in the House Rules and prescribed in its format: at most two pages per candidate, naming which professional achievement corresponds to which criterion. The same provision should fix the steps and deadlines of the nomination procedure — for today the practice changes from case to case, and this is why every single personnel decision turns into a separate political dispute. The I1 programme point on judicial transparency and the KI7 programme point on the official-selection and rotation system carry the same principle over to the judicial and civil-service side: a documented examination before appointment is not distrust but protection of the decision. A positive precedent worth highlighting is that President of the Republic András Baka made his own asset declaration public — this is a step in the direction of the A3 programme point, and it is worth extending the same practice to the candidates for two-thirds offices.

3.3 The repeatability test — extending the constitutional stress test to selection procedures (by the first half of 2027)

The I10 constitutional stress test has so far been directed at whether the system of checks and balances would prevent a hypothetical concentration of power. MIAK proposes that from the first half of 2027 the test should also examine, in a separate chapter, the selection procedures for two-thirds public-law offices, along a single question: could a two-thirds majority of the opposite political composition run this same procedure without damaging the institution? If the answer is no, the procedure is faulty — regardless of who applies it at any given time. The result of the examination is public, and the indicators of the institutional independence index of A6 can be used for the measurement: the political composition of appointments, decision-making turnaround time, the annual number of substantive rulings. This is the only yardstick that applies in the same way to today’s government majority and to every later one.

The three proposals are bound together by the same principle: the quality of institutional selection is not decided by whether the persons selected are good, but by whether the procedure remains acceptable if someone else applies it tomorrow. That is the difference between a change of personnel and institutional restoration. Nobody disputes the professional suitability of the current candidates — which is precisely why this is the most suitable moment to write the rule, when the rule is not directed against a particular candidate.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Justice system Public hearings and a scored criteria list make professional considerations the subject of debate instead of speculation about persons; the body’s legitimacy strengthens over the longer term A public hearing may deter candidates who do not want to end up in political crossfire — this may act as a filter precisely among the lawyers most committed to independence
Public administration Fixing the procedural rule makes the filling of two-thirds offices predictable and reduces today’s practice whereby every personnel decision grows into a separate political crisis A rigid criteria system may turn into formalism: the candidate who is best on paper is not necessarily the most suitable, and scoring can obscure substantive deliberation
Political system The repeatability test provides a yardstick that can be applied to every future majority, and so takes the debate out of day-to-day party logic If the result of the test is unfavourable, the majority of the day will have an interest in postponing publication — which is why the deadline for publicity must be fixed in the rule

The package’s main tension runs between timing and self-restraint. For a two-thirds majority every procedural tightening narrows its own room for manoeuvre, and a political force typically takes this step when it no longer has the strength for it — that is, when its credibility has also run out. The proposal tips towards the risk side if the rules only enter into force for the next cycle: that would create precisely the impression it is intended to avoid. The second question for deliberation is the depth of the public hearing. Putting questions about candidates’ positions on future cases is contrary to constitutional-judicial independence, since it would commit a member of the body in advance. The subject of the hearing should therefore be the professional record, the methodological outlook and conflicts of interest, not the direction of likely decisions.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth following? (suggested KPIs)

MIAK proposes four performance indicators (KPIs, in English: Key Performance Indicator) from which it will be visible in 12 and 36 months whether a procedural change has taken place, or merely a personal one:

  • The existence of a written, public selection procedure for two-thirds public-law offices: the suggested target is that by the Prosecutor General election there be a House Rules provision on the public hearing and on the nomination reasoning.
  • The annual number of substantive rulings of the Constitutional Court: the I4 programme point sets a rise above 120 from the present roughly 80 rulings a year. This indicator tells us whether the body has regained its actual room for manoeuvre, or whether only its composition has changed.
  • The average turnaround time of constitutional-court decision-making: the suggested target of the A6 programme point is a turnaround below 90 days. A body that decides in two years is in practice not protecting any fundamental right.
  • The share of candidates for two-thirds offices with public asset declarations: the suggested target is that within 12 months every candidate publish a machine-readable asset declaration before election, in the format of the A3 programme point.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s request in a single sentence: before the next two-thirds personnel decision is made, write down the rule according to which it happens. Concretely: a mandatorily public and recorded committee hearing, a scored suitability list published in advance, a two-page nomination reasoning for every candidate, and from the first half of 2027 the inclusion of selection procedures in the annual constitutional stress test. This request is not directed against Tuesday’s vote, nor does it call into question the suitability of the candidates — it is about ensuring that the present decision does not become a precedent for a practice that MIAK would object to under another majority as well.

Two MIAK foundational values are at stake here. One is accountability: a twelve-year mandate is in force across three electoral cycles, so the majority taking the decision assumes an obligation whose consequences someone will have to bear beyond its own mandate — only a documented procedure, assessable after the event, makes this answerable. The other is being non-ideological, though not in the usual sense: MIAK applies the same yardstick now to the government majority that it would earlier have applied to the practice of the previous two-thirds majority. If criticism of a procedure depended on who happens to be in power, it would not be a yardstick but a party allegiance.

Part VI — Reasoning and further sources

6.1 Press framing by spectrum

The liberal-left and general-interest band made speculation about persons the main axis of its framing, but with differing depth. Telex reported the list of Mi Hazánk’s candidates in factual form, together with the party’s reasoning, and recorded that the members of the body are elected by Parliament from among the candidates. HVG went considerably further: the backbone of its article was not the fact of nomination but the readers’ interpretations surrounding it — the piece quoted from several thousand comments arguing that Miklós Ligeti should be employed in accountability work, not at the Constitutional Court. At the same time the paper corrected this narrative on two points: it recorded that nominating the Prosecutor General is the competence of the President of the Republic, not of the Prime Minister, and that the candidates had obviously consented to their nomination. 444.hu confined itself to reporting facts. 24.hu was the only outlet to treat the professional criticism as news value in its own right: by giving the floor to the legal scholar Péter Hack and the political scientist Dániel Mikecz, it placed the process of selection at the centre, not the persons.

The conservative band ran its framing out to the question of legitimacy. Magyar Nemzet, citing an analysis by the Tűzfalcsoport, sketched a picture in which the new members, together with those already in office, may deliver decisions matching the Prime Minister’s expectations, and it quoted the position of the Fidesz group, according to which the termination of the earlier constitutional judges’ mandates was contrary to the Fundamental Law, and therefore the new members will not be legitimate public-law actors. The same article also recorded that the Constitutional Court rejected the group’s earlier petition on the basis that it may not examine the content of an amendment to the Fundamental Law, only the procedural propriety of its adoption. This framing needs clarification on one point: an elected constitutional judge cannot legally be given instructions in the exercise of their office, and the political composition of nominations is a separate public-law category. At the same time, the substantive part of the legitimacy objection — that the composition of the body is determined by a single political force — cannot be dismissed by pointing out that the other side previously did the same. It is precisely this argument that MIAK translates into a procedural requirement in its own proposal.

The business band connected to the topic on a single thread: Portfolio processed the itemised data of the President of the Republic’s asset declaration. This choice of outlet is informative in itself — the business press typically approaches public-law personnel questions from the side of asset transparency, and from MIAK’s point of view this thread is more valuable than speculation about candidates.

6.2 Facts and data

Datum Value Source
Date of the parliamentary vote Tuesday morning; committee hearing the previous day Magyar Nemzet / HVG, 11 September 2026
Constitutional-judge seats to be filled 5 (in the fifteen-member body) Telex / 24.hu, 11 September 2026
Length of the constitutional-judge mandate 12 years Fundamental Law of Hungary, Article 24
Majority required for election two-thirds of MPs (133 of the 199 seats) Fundamental Law of Hungary, Article 24
Seat numbers of the government majority Tisza 141 (70.85%), Fidesz–KDNP 52, Mi Hazánk 6 National Election Office (NVI), finalisation of 19 April 2026
Participation of the Fidesz group announced abstention from the vote 24.hu, 11 September 2026
Vacancy of the Prosecutor General post Gábor Bálint Nagy’s July resignation, actual departure on 25 August 2026 HVG, 9 September 2026 (the article was not publicly downloadable)
Length of the Prosecutor General mandate 9 years; nomination is the competence of the President of the Republic, election by two-thirds majority HVG, 9 September 2026 (the article was not publicly downloadable)
Size of the prosecution service around 5,000 staff, roughly 150 independent units HVG, 9 September 2026 (the article was not publicly downloadable)
Financial assets of the President of the Republic made public HUF 154 million in financial assets, four properties Portfolio / 24.hu, 11 September 2026

Two data points require a separate note. The source for the data on the Prosecutor General procedure was a subscription article of which only the publicly available opening section was readable — the figures given here come from that and should be verified from an official source, the annual report of the prosecution service. The day of the vote follows from the papers’ reference to “Tuesday”; the exact date can be checked against the parliamentary agenda.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Justice (programme points) — the body’s actual room for manoeuvre: I4 (protection of judicial independence, including the restoration of constitutional-court competences), I10 (constitutional stress test) and I1 (judicial transparency) provide the framework of the proposal;
  • Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points) — the measurability of selection: A6 (strengthening checks and balances, institutional independence index) and A3 (publicity of asset declarations) provide the two data systems by which the process can be judged after the event;
  • Public administration and e-government (programme points) — the general principle of a documented examination before appointment: KI7 (official-selection and rotation system) carries the same logic over to the civil-service side.

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Mihály Bihari: Rendszerváltás Magyarországon — alkotmányreform

Mihály Bihari, political scientist, constitutional judge from 1999 and president of the body from 2005, treats the constitutional process of the regime change in three phases. From the point of view of the present topic the agenda of the National Round Table negotiations is the most important element: according to the study’s enumeration, the expressly named subjects of the negotiations included

“the bills on the Constitutional Court; on the institution of the President of the Republic; on parties; on the right to vote; on information and the provision of information”.

The volume also documents that the parliament of the transition raised the agreements adopted at the round table to statutory level — that is, the basic rules of the institutional system were born not as the decision of a single political force but as a negotiated agreement. In the same place Bihari also presents the MDF–SZDSZ agreement of 29 April 1990, one element of which was precisely a significant reduction in the range of laws requiring a two-thirds majority — that is, the actors of the regime change deliberately weighed up for which questions broad agreement had to be compelled, and for which a simple majority was sufficient.

For today’s situation this means that the two-thirds rule on the composition of the Constitutional Court is not a technical threshold but follows from the logic of the institution’s founding: this is a body created expressly so that no political force could dispose of it alone. The fact that today a single parliamentary group can reach the two-thirds threshold does not invalidate that intention — it merely shows that the threshold is in itself no longer a sufficient instrument for it.

📖 Source: Mihály Bihari: Rendszerváltás Magyarországon — alkotmányreform

6.4.2 The Fundamental Law of Hungary (text in force on 17 April 2026)

The official explanatory note to Article 24 of the Fundamental Law defines the Constitutional Court as “the supreme organ for the protection of the Fundamental Law”, and records that the body is responsible for ensuring that legislation — in its procedure and in its result alike — is in harmony with the constitution. The part on selection is the direct legal source for the present topic:

“The members of the Constitutional Court derive their mandate directly from the supreme organ of popular representation possessing democratic authorisation, the National Assembly, which elects the members of the body with broad consensus, by the votes of two-thirds of the Members of the National Assembly. The twelve-year term of mandate, the prohibition on party membership and the prohibition on political activity are the constitutional guarantees of the independence of the members of the Constitutional Court.”

The explanatory note therefore does not simply communicate a procedural rule but names the purpose of the rule: broad consensus. The same text lists the body’s competences — prior and subsequent norm control, constitutional complaint, examination of compliance with international obligations — and records that the president is elected by Parliament itself, which strengthens the president’s independence from the internal interest relations of the body.

In today’s debate this passage is the most precise yardstick. When a single parliamentary group can also reach the two-thirds threshold, the letter of the rule is satisfied but its purpose is not: consensus as a requirement is hollowed out. MIAK’s proposal seeks precisely to fill this gap — if consensus cannot be institutionally compelled, then at least publicity and after-the-fact assessability should take its place.

📖 Source: National Assembly: Fundamental Law of Hungary (text in force on 17 April 2026, explanatory note to Article 24)

6.4.3 Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America

In his chapter on the power of the majority Tocqueville poses the question that goes beyond formal lawfulness. He does not dispute that power derives from the will of the majority — he himself regards this as a basic principle — but he disputes that unlimited power would follow from it:

“Unlimited power is in itself a bad and dangerous thing; human beings are not competent to exercise it with discretion.”

The essence of the argument is that the majority can abuse its power just as any individual wielder of power can: people do not change their character by being many, nor does their patience with obstacles grow along with the consciousness of their strength. From this Tocqueville does not derive a rejection of the majority principle but the conclusion that there must always be an obstacle that slows the dominant power and forces it into self-restraint.

In the Hungarian situation this thought fits the present question precisely. Tuesday’s vote is constitutional, the candidates are professionally undisputed, and the process is lawful — the only missing element is an institutionalised form of self-restraint. On Tocqueville’s argument this is not a question of the majority’s good faith but a structural question: an obstacle is needed not because today’s majority is acting in bad faith, but because the absence of limits changes every majority.

📖 Source: Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America

6.5 International comparison

The most instructive negative precedent is Poland’s judicial reform between 2018 and 2023, to which the I4 programme point also refers: there, bringing the disciplinary chamber under political control led to several condemnatory judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union and to the freezing of EU funds. The lesson from the point of view of the present Hungarian situation lies not in the content of the measure but in its mechanism: every single step of the Polish reform was a formally lawful legislative act; the problem arose from the combined effect of the steps and from the absence of procedural guarantees.

On the positive side two models deserve attention. In Portugal, alongside the body of judicial self-government (Conselho Superior da Magistratura), the highest perception of independence in EU surveys can be measured — there the rules of selection are stable and independent of political cycles. In Colombia the constitutional court created in 1991 delivers around 800 substantive decisions a year, and in roughly 40 per cent of cases decides against the government; this ratio shows that the actual weight of a constitutional court is measured not by its composition but by the number and direction of its substantive decisions. This latter point directly supports the indicator proposed in section 5.1: in the case of the Hungarian body too, the real signal will be a rise in the number of substantive rulings, not the change of members.

The advisory body of the Council of Europe, the Venice Commission, has formulated in several country opinions the same principle that MIAK’s proposal takes over: the selection of constitutional judges can be regarded as appropriate if the procedure is transparent, the professional criteria are fixed in advance, and the decision does not lie within the exclusive competence of a single political actor. Where the latter cannot be ensured because of the seat ratios, publicity and documented reasoning are the remaining guarantee.

Justice

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

Transparency and anti-corruption policy

  • A3 — Publicity of asset declarations
  • A6 — Strengthening checks and balances

Public administration and e-government

  • KI7 — Official-selection and rotation system

Proposed new programme point: A repeatability test for the selection of two-thirds public-law offices — for the Justice policy area: the procedure of every two-thirds personnel decision should be examined in a separate chapter of the annual constitutional stress test, with the question of whether the procedure would remain acceptable in the hands of a majority of the opposite composition.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 12 September 2026 — topic 2):

Knowledge-base references (books):

  • 📖 Mihály Bihari: Rendszerváltás Magyarországon — alkotmányreform
  • 📖 National Assembly: Fundamental Law of Hungary (text in force on 17 April 2026)
  • 📖 Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Justice (programme points; programme point ID: I1, I4, I10)
  • MIAK policy area: Transparency and anti-corruption policy (programme points; programme point ID: A3, A6)
  • MIAK policy area: Public administration and e-government (programme points; programme point ID: KI7)
  • MIAK press monitor, 12 September 2026 — topic 2, score: 88/100

Supplementary public data sources:

  • Venice Commission — country opinions on the selection of constitutional judges
  • European Commission — Rule of Law Report, Hungary country chapter
  • V-Dem — judicial independence index time series

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