Hungary’s Tisza Party has filed its first proposed amendment to the country’s constitution, setting out a package of reforms, including one measure that would prevent Viktor Orbán from ever returning as prime minister.
The proposal, submitted as the Sixteenth Amendment to Hungary’s Fundamental Law, would require the support of two-thirds of members of Parliament to pass, a figure now attainable due to the majority achieved by Prime Minister Péter Magyar in last month’s election.
One measure would place an eight-year cap on service as prime minister. Under the text, anyone who has held the office for a combined total of at least eight years, even with interruptions, would no longer be eligible to be elected prime minister.
The rule would apply retroactively to terms served since May 2, 1990, meaning it would cover the full post-communist period. In practical terms, the measure would directly affect Orbán, whose years in office far exceed the proposed limit.
Magyar repeatedly argued during the campaign that Hungary should limit prime ministers to two terms, including through retroactive application.
A further section of the proposal concerns public-interest asset management foundations that perform public tasks. These institutions have played a major role in Hungary’s higher education and public asset system under the previously governing Fidesz party.
Portfolio notes that Tisza’s amendment would declare the assets of such foundations to be national property and give the government the power to terminate the foundations. The justification states that the foundations received major public assets while their founding rights were transferred to boards of trustees, which Tisza argues removed democratic oversight from the management of public funds. The party says the system should be changed so that ultimate responsibility and decision-making authority returns to the state.
Orbán’s allies accused the new Tisza-led majority of using constitutional power to restrict voters’ choices.
Balázs Orbán, the former political director to Viktor Orbán, wrote on X, “Hungary’s new liberal government already fears that Hungarians would vote Viktor Orbán back into office. So instead, they want to ban Hungarians from being able to vote that way again. That’s how afraid they are.
“They have a constitutional supermajority. They just won a landslide election. And yet they are still terrified of Viktor Orbán,” he added.
In further criticism of the broader reforms, he claimed the new government was moving “to rewrite the Constitution in ways that would weaken democracy, national sovereignty, and institutional independence.”
He described the prime ministerial term-limit proposal as an attempt to “restrict who Hungarians are allowed to elect as Prime Minister through administrative constitutional changes,” adding, “This is not a technical adjustment. It is an attempt to narrow democratic choice through legal engineering.”
He also accused Tisza of weakening protections for Hungary’s “national identity and Christian cultural heritage,” undermining the constitutional basis used to resist EU migration policy, and seeking to re-centralize the university system.
“For many Hungarians, this looks less like reform and more like the concentration of political control over institutions that were intentionally placed outside direct state influence,” he wrote.
“The question is whether Hungary will remain a Hungarian, democratic, and sovereign country — or slowly give up its identity and independence under political pressure.”
