# Fundamental Law of Hungary Hungary's constitution, adopted by the Fidesz supermajority on **18 April 2011** and in force since **1 January 2012**, replacing the amended 1949 text that had served the country since the 1989 transition. It is the central legal instrument of what this vault files as [[State Capture]], and the reason the Hungarian model is studied rather than merely deplored. ## What made it different from a normal constitution - **It was written by one party.** Drafted and adopted without opposition participation and without a referendum, using the two-thirds majority [[Fidesz]] won in 2010 on 53% of the list vote. - **It constitutionalised ordinary policy.** So-called cardinal laws — covering tax and pension policy, family definitions, the media authority, the judiciary, the electoral system, church recognition and the state audit office — were placed behind two-thirds thresholds, so that a future government with a simple majority could not change them. - **It embedded contested substance.** A preamble invoking Christianity and the Holy Crown; marriage defined as between a man and a woman; the protection of life "from conception"; and, via later amendments, provisions on homelessness, gender identity and the composition of the courts. - **It was amended repeatedly.** Where the Constitutional Court struck something down, the majority frequently rewrote the constitution rather than the statute — including a 2013 amendment that annulled the Court's pre-2012 case law and narrowed its jurisdiction over budgetary matters. ## The companion instruments The constitution is not self-executing. It was operationalised through the 2011 electoral law (parliament cut from 386 to 199 seats, a single round replacing two, and every district redrawn), a lowered judicial retirement age that vacated senior benches at once, a new administrative court branch under executive influence, and the media and NGO laws catalogued at [[Hungary]] and [[KESMA]]. The **Venice Commission** of the Council of Europe criticised both the drafting process and the cardinal-law device; the European Parliament triggered **Article 7(1)** of the Treaty on European Union against Hungary in September 2018; and EU cohesion and recovery funds were progressively frozen from 2020 on rule-of-law and corruption grounds. > [!important] ⭐ The finding: entrenchment is a bet that you will lose eventually > The cardinal-law architecture exists to bind a future opposition government. In **April 2026** that opposition won 141 of 199 seats — a two-thirds majority of its own — which means the entrenchment binds nobody and the tools transfer whole. **A constitutional lock is only as strong as the assumption that your opponents will never hold the key**, and the 2011 design assumed exactly that. ## Status, August 2026 The [[Tisza Party]] government of [[Péter Magyar]] holds the constitutional majority. Its first move, on taking office on 13 May 2026, was to demand the resignation of the heads of the supreme court, the constitutional court and the prosecution service; none complied, leaving removal by constitutional amendment as the available route. See [[Operation Cleansing Fire]]. ## See Also - [[Hungarian History Hub]] · [[Hungary]] - [[Viktor Orbán]] · [[Péter Magyar]] · [[Fidesz]] · [[Tisza Party]] - [[Illiberal Democracy]] · [[State Capture]] · [[Orbán Kleptocracy]] · [[Mafia State]] - [[European Union]] · [[Rule of Law]] - [[Project 2025]] — the American document that borrows from this sequence