Hungary’s parliament has approved a constitutional amendment that limits any prime minister to a maximum of eight years in office, a retroactive measure that permanently disqualifies Viktor Orbán from returning to power. The vote, carried by 135 deputies to 50 with six abstentions, marks the first major legislative act of Péter Magyar’s Tisza party since it swept to a two-thirds supermajority in April’s election. The amendment fulfils a central campaign pledge by Magyar, who framed it as a safeguard against the kind of entrenched executive dominance that defined Orbán’s sixteen-year rule.

Orbán, who led Hungary uninterrupted from 2010 until his defeat this spring, had himself rewritten the constitution and amended it fifteen times to consolidate power. The new provision applies retroactively to all premiers since 1990, meaning that even non-consecutive terms are counted toward the limit. Fidesz, Orbán’s diminished party, voted against the measure, and the former prime minister—re-elected as its leader only days earlier—denounced it as a partisan attack. Yet the arithmetic in the chamber was decisive: Tisza’s supermajority, won in an election that stunned observers from Brussels to Washington, gave Magyar the same constitutional levers Orbán once wielded.

Beyond the term limit, the amendment strips constitutional protection from a state agency Orbán’s government created to investigate individuals, organisations, and media outlets deemed threats to Hungary’s “constitutional identity.” The body, widely criticised as a tool of political intimidation, will now be vulnerable to abolition or reform. Analysts in Berlin and Vienna note the irony of Magyar using the very mechanisms of illiberal statecraft to dismantle the edifice his predecessor built, a dynamic that raises questions about the durability of Hungary’s democratic reset.

The amendment now awaits the signature of President Tamás Sulyok, a figure with close ties to Orbán, creating a potential constitutional friction point. Should Sulyok delay or refuse, Tisza’s supermajority can override him, but the standoff would test the new government’s institutional resolve. Viewed from London and Paris, the episode is being read as a stress test for Hungary’s re-emergence as a predictable European partner after years of rule-of-law disputes with the European Union.

Looking ahead, Magyar’s government has signalled further reforms, including reversing Orbán-era policies on the International Criminal Court and mending relations with Budapest’s liberal mayor over Pride events. The term-limit amendment, however, is the cornerstone of a broader project to re-engineer the state. Whether this constitutional surgery can heal Hungary’s democratic tissue or merely replaces one dominant force with another will depend on the Tisza government’s willingness to subject its own power to the same constraints it has just imposed on its predecessor.