Hungary’s Parliament has adopted the sixteenth amendment to the Fundamental Law, limiting the maximum length of a prime minister’s tenure to eight years.
The amendment, initiated by two representatives of the Tisza Party, Márton Melléthei-Barna and István Hantosi, was approved by the National Assembly with 135 votes in favor, 50 against, and 6 abstentions.
Under the amendment, the Fundamental Law now stipulates that a person cannot be elected Prime Minister if they have already served a total of at least eight years in the office, including non-consecutive terms. For the calculation of this eight-year period, all prime ministerial mandates held on or after May 2, 1990, must be taken into account.
The amendment also expands the list of circumstances under which a prime minister’s mandate ends, specifying that the mandate automatically terminates once the individual has served a total of at least eight years as Prime Minister.
Parliament also removed from the Fundamental Law the provision that served as the constitutional basis for the establishment of the Sovereignty Protection Office. The deleted clause stated that “an independent body established by a cardinal law shall operate for the protection of constitutional identity.”
In addition, the closing provisions of the Fundamental Law were supplemented to state that the assets transferred by the state to public-interest asset management foundations (known in Hungarian as kekva foundations) will revert to state ownership.
According to the amendment, any assets transferred by the state to such foundations as founder, joining party, or under any other legal title, together with the income generated from those assets and any assets replacing them, will be transferred back to the state free of charge as universal legal successor upon the foundation’s dissolution. Asset management rights and public-task-related asset management rights over state-owned property will also cease.
The amendment further provides that the state will exercise the founder’s rights over these foundations and may terminate them. The rules governing the operation, dissolution, public duties, and other responsibilities of the foundations will be determined by law.
The amendment to the Fundamental Law will enter into force on the day following its official promulgation.
