With the second and last mandate of the current president of Hungary, 61-year-old János Áder, expiring on March 2022, the governing conservative Fidesz party is already looking for his replacement, news portal Mandiner reports.
Fidesz founding politician and lawyer János Áder was first elected president of Hungary by Parliament on April 12, 2012, and re-elected with a 131 to 39 majority on March 13, 2017, meaning that his second and last constitutionally allowed term will end on March 13, 2022. According to the constitution, parliament will have to elect a new president 30 to 60 days before the expiry of the incumbent’s mandate.
According to Mandiner’s information, discussions among leading Fidesz politicians so far came up with three potential candidates: László Trócsányi, János Csák and Miklós Maróth (pictured above, left to right).
The 64-year-old László Trócsányi is a Hungarian lawyer, academic, diplomat and politician, and member of the European Parliament (MEP) since 2019. He was Hungarian ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg from 2000 to 2004, and a member of the Constitutional Court of Hungary between 2007 and 2010. He served as Hungarian ambassador to France from 2010 to 2014 and was minister of justice in the third and fourth Orbán cabinets, from June 6, 2014 to June 30, 2019.
The 57-year-old János Csák is a businessman with masters’ degrees in finance and sociology. He held executive and board positions at several major European, US and Australian companies, including telecoms group Matáv, oil and gas group MOL, T-Mobile Hungary, Creditanstalt Bank, Falcon Oil and Gas, and Wildhorse Energy Ltd. He also served as Hungary’s ambassador to the United Kingdom from 2011 to 2014.
Miklós Maróth (77), is a linguist, orientalist and university professor, member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, who currently is the president of the Eötvös Loránd network of Hungarian research institutes.
The president of Hungary has a largely ceremonial role, with the role’s most important actual power being the ability to send back to parliament or refer to the Constitutional Court any bill before signing it into law.
Title image: László Trócsányi, János Csák and Miklós Maróth, identified as potential candidates for the Presidency. (source: mandiner.hu)
