What the End of the Orban Era Means for Hungary and Its Constitution | Marton Sulyok

[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] Hungary is undergoing a major transformation with the election of a new prime minister.

After 16 years in power, Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party was swept from office in a historic landslide election in April and with an equally historic turnout of almost 80 percent.

The new Tisza party, led by Peter Magyar, won the largest super-majority in Hungary’s post-communist history with a platform focused on anti-corruption and national renewal. They’ve promised major changes to Hungary’s constitution, known as the Fundamental Law.

So what does this election mean for Hungary and how might the new leadership reorient its relationship with America, the European Union, Russia, and China?

Orban was known for his pro-family and pro-tradition domestic policies, while at the same time cultivating close ties with Russia and communist China and distancing himself from the EU.

Joining us today to break all this down is Hungarian constitutional law scholar Marton Sulyok, a visiting researcher at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution.

Sulyok is, notably, also the son of Hungary’s current President, Tamas Sulyok.

Magyar has demanded the resignation of Sulyok and other Orban allies. It remains to be seen whether they will be forced out by constitutional amendment or other means.

Despite his family ties, the younger Sulyok has remained strikingly detached.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:

Marton Sulyok, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Marton Sulyok:

Thank you, Jan. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Mr. Jekielek:

So last April, we had a sea change in the political reality in Hungary. Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party was voted out in kind of a massive landslide to the point where the new party, TISZA [Tisza Party], if I’ve got it right, can actually change the constitution. It has the power, it has the seats, it has the power to actually change the constitution foundationally. What happened?

Mr. Sulyok:

Okay, to put this in a little bit of context, we have to go back to when Fidesz initially, for the second time, received the seats necessary to change the constitution, which was 2010. They ran on a campaign that if they won, they would change the constitution. So they did, and eventually that rule lasted 16 years, and over the course of 16 years, we’ve had 15 amendments to the constitution that they adopted in 2011.

And then when Mr. Magyar ran against Fidesz in the last two years, he also had a campaign promise that once they won the election, they would adopt a new constitution because the previous one was thought to disunite the nation. This actually was paraphrased in a couple of titles of commentaries on the constitution, for example. So basically, he operated on the message that we need a constitution of national reunification, basically. And the message was so loud and clear that they didn’t only get two-thirds of the seats in Parliament but actually four-fifths of the seats in Parliament. So it’s the largest supermajority that we have seen since we transitioned from communism to democracy in 1989, which is a phenomenon on its own as well.

Mr. Jekielek:

But what happened? You don’t see shifts like this that often. It’s obviously never in the history of Hungary, in the modern free Hungary history. So how did that happen?

Mr. Sulyok:

The Tisza Party ran on an anti-corruption platform, arguing that Fidesz over the course of 16 years had wasted a lot of public resources. Obviously, we’ve had COVID and the war in Ukraine break out as exigent circumstances that had to shape policy while they were in office. But they ran four times before this election, and they’ve been given two-thirds majority by the people. So many of them were actually satisfied with the work that they’re doing. But even Fidesz admitted after the elections that if the current one would have been only among people above 40 years of age, they would have won.

But many of the new voters, for example, about 350,000-ish, have been very disillusioned. They grew up under the Fidesz regime, and they didn’t like what they saw, basically. And they’ve also lost a lot of voters during the past 8-10 years, intelligentsia being one major factor in this, for example. So I think this is the shortest possible answer to the question, what happened?

Mr. Jekielek:

Another thing that I have to bring up is that your father is the current president of Hungary. Now, that’s a mostly ceremonial role in Hungary, but he has kind of refused the request of the prime minister, Magyar, to step down. And as we’re filming, he has three days to step down per the prime minister.

Mr. Sulyok:

Yes, indeed. It is not conventional, I could say, that an incoming prime minister just warns or puts the sitting president on notice that he should resign. This, however, happened. And there’s a lot of legal scenarios that can play out here. Eventually there’s talk about obviously amending the Constitution, there’s impeachment scenarios as well, and the new prime minister will possibly live up to his promise that he made in the final stages of the campaign that if the president and other leaders who he called Orban puppets will not resign then they will change the Constitution and make it so that they have to leave.

There’s institutional reforms at play as well, or ideas that are being thrown around. Obviously, the impeachment scenario in terms of the president is improbable. One other thing that plays into this debate between the prime minister and the president is that the president, simply because he’s non-executive, and not like in the U.S. at least, he doesn’t have political responsibility. It’s members of the government that undertake political responsibility for his actions.

But currently, the prime minister operates under the assumption that the president does have political responsibility. And he makes this argument because he thinks that he should have spoken up previously during the campaign in terms of, for example, a child protection scandal that shook public opinion and the nation. And simply because he did not do so, this is now being counted as a fault on his part. And this is why his resignation is being demanded.

Mr. Jekielek:

I mean, you know, it’s hard. I know you’re an academic, right? Of course. And you pride yourself on being objective. But in this case, it’s hard, obviously.

Mr. Sulyok:

I will tell you, it is hard to adopt a mindset of neutral objectivity. I’m not, you know, I’m not complimenting either side when I’m talking about these kinds of things. I remain neutral. As the days progressed leading up to this talk that we have now, I read a lot of news articles and also academic articles from my fellow colleagues that have, you know, moved abroad or are still in Hungary and have observed the developments from the sidelines. There’s a lot of scenarios. Former parliamentarians who are now in the constitutional law space, for example, say that in a rule of law country, such warnings cannot simply be done. And, you know, the president cannot be removed from office.

Mr. Jekielek:

So you think this new government just wants a clean break from the past?

Mr. Sulyok:

I guess so, absolutely. And in a parliamentary logic, it kind of makes sense that this happens. But the cycle of the president and the cycle of all of the public leaders that are now being called to resign was designed deliberately in a way that it will overarch parliamentary cycles. Our parliamentary cycle is four years; the president’s term of office is five years, for example. And I think this is part of the clean break strategy that they want because it would be much easier for the government to remove the veto players, as we call them, in this space, because the president, for example, has power over legislation.

So if he has constitutional scruples, then he can send the piece of legislation adopted by Parliament to the Constitutional Court for review. Or he can resend this or send it back to the Parliament for renegotiation. It’s a one-time thing, but he still can do this. So for reasons of popularity and legitimacy, there might be a consideration in the heads of people currently in government, and the prime minister primarily, that would want to remove these veto players from the equation, basically.

Mr. Jekielek:

And there are other veto players too, you’re saying?

Mr. Sulyok:

Absolutely. We have the president of the Supreme Court, the president of the Constitutional Court, the prosecutor general or chief prosecutor. There are others as well that are less significant or influential in this sense. But these people have all been called to resign until the May 31st deadline. And if it does not happen, then obviously changes will need to be introduced that will create a rule of law framework, hopefully, to remove them. And the easiest way to do this is through constitutional amendment.

Mr. Jekielek:

So what can we expect from this new party, from this new government? It’s not, from what I’ve seen, and I’ve also done my own research, as clear-cut as it might be in many people’s minds. I’ve heard from analysts here everything from, you know, this is a completely transformational, different mentality form of government, right? And all the way to, this is just a different type of conservative government. I’ve heard the range of that, all of it. So what’s the reality?

Mr. Sulyok:

It’s a very good question. If we simply look at the government itself, these people are, you know, top-notch professionals in their field: CEOs, former diplomats, lawyers, and other kinds of professionals. We know a lot about their CVs, about their resumes, but we don’t really know where they stand politically. There are educated guesses that people can make, since Magyar is a former Fidesz insider. So the assumption is that Magyar, as a former insider, is center-Right, but obviously his voting base has a lot of people from the center-Left and the Left as well.

So portfolios like culture and societal affairs, like social affairs, might eventually be Left-leaning, but time needs to lapse for us to be able to see where this goes, really. There is a program under which they ran the election campaign. It’s called the Program for a Functional and Humane Hungary. It’s about 250 pages altogether for the relevant part in terms of reforms and initiatives that they want to carry out. They have already filed constitutional amendments, one of them actually. They have already filed amendments to legislation.

We can talk about this obviously in detail as well, because it also might cut back to the question of whether it’s a clear-cut break from the previous regime or not. But there are also a lot of concepts that have been floated around on how they will, for example, try and regain those national funds that were supposed to have been wasted by Fidesz over 16 years. So there are a lot of things that we can talk about in this sense.

Mr. Jekielek:

So, of course, this was an anti-corruption platform that TISZA pursued. Is that a fair characterization? I mean, certainly the electorate seems to think so.

Mr. Sulyok:

Partly, absolutely, yes. There’s been a lot of wasting of public funds. And we have not yet seen the legal framing of this, to be my name that I assigned to it, a national asset reclamation or recovery and protection office, basically, that is tasked with the sole purpose of recovering all of those funds that have been allocated by Fidesz to purposes that are now being investigated or are under review. It might, it has to be a completely independent organization without government oversight. The exact outset of how it’s going to look is unknown at this point, but it’s been one of the buzzwords of the campaign that this office is going to be set up.

There’s a variety of EU legislation that supports creating these offices in every member state, for example. There’s a directive on forfeiting assets that have been acquired through crime. And then there is, for example, the joining of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office [EPPO], which has been postponed by the Fidesz government indefinitely. Now the new government is going to join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, which would give them additional jurisdiction to go after people who have allegedly been corrupt in the sense of dealing with EU funds, because EPPO primarily defends the financial interests of the European Union. So there’s both national and European law.

Mr. Jekielek:

But just let me jump in. I’m just thinking about this. But the International Criminal Court [ICC], they’re maintaining the position that they’re kind of receding from the court, right? That’s interesting.

Mr. Sulyok:

Yes and no, actually. I think it was two or three days ago that the government had adopted a position that they will stay in the International Criminal Court. Despite the fact that the previous administration—I mean Orbán’s government—announced plans to exit the ICC, the Magyar government had basically reverted on this.

Mr. Jekielek:

Oh, okay, so I have bad information. I thought they were going to continue with that.

Mr. Sulyok:

It is the nature of the beast. It’s a developing story. There are a lot of changes that happen every year, every day, sorry. So this is one of those, I guess.

Mr. Jekielek:

You’re obviously a constitutional scholar. What are the biggest, most positive changes that could be made in this constitution, which has been changed so many times since its founding? And actually, why don’t we just briefly talk about that? Maybe compare the Hungarian constitutional amendment process to the American one.

Mr. Sulyok:

Absolutely, I will. And for us to be able to understand what could be done, it also needs to be understood how it came to be that we’ve had a constitution for 16 years and we’ve amended it 15 times. But I will have to go back even further than this to put this into a little bit of historical context. So when we transitioned from communism to democracy in 1989, the first constitution that was then adopted was, as we call it, revolution by negotiation.  It was a very shaky compromise between former members of the Socialist Workers’ Party, the then-founding Fidesz generation, and a side that was called the Third Side Civil Society, sitting down as part of a national roundtable. It was an extra-parliamentary constitutional process that was then approved. The final text was then approved by the first freely elected parliament.

But the trick is that in its preamble, it had a provision that declared that this is only the text of the constitution until the new constitution of Hungary is adopted.  So this gave the idea to Orbán to run on the platform that if we are given the authorization, we will adopt the constitution. So they did, and then before this time, so under the first constitution that we’ve had after 1990, in those 20 years during which it was in effect, it was amended about 300 times. We had the two-thirds majority to apply for amendment at that point as well.

We kind of played around with the four-fifths majority for a little while, but it was necessary under parliamentary procedure to adopt the regulatory concept, not the draft text of the Constitution. So obviously, since we did not have two-thirds political consensus behind the idea of a new Constitution, or even when we did, it failed, we discarded this four-fifths rule and reverted to the two-thirds. That’s been the only rule that we’ve known.

To put it in an American comparison, we have a unicameral Parliament, the one house, and within the one house currently, we have 199 representatives. and out of those, two-thirds can amend and adopt a new constitution, basically. And I don’t necessarily have to go into the details of the American process, but it’s a federal system with two houses, and the two houses together, and also three-quarters of the member states have to adopt an amendment for it to pass. The most recent debates about the Equal Rights Amendment, I think, are very familiar to everyone in this country.

And since we’re talking about the United States, in contrast, if we put it in historical perspective, under the 247 years of the U.S. Constitution, there have been 27 amendments. It’s kind of like comparing apples and oranges because we’re very different systems, but this kind of gives you a perspective on the numbers of the amendments. And like I said, under the 16 years of the, let’s call it Fidesz constitution, we had 15 amendments and the 16th to the same document has been introduced by the new government right now.

Mr. Jekielek:

Right. So to summarize, the first constitution, which lasted 20 years, had 300 amendments. The second one, which has lasted to today, had basically one amendment a year vs. the U.S. Constitution has about one amendment a decade and not too many recently.

Mr. Sulyok:

Yes, I think that is a fair characterization. And there are many more amendments to come to this current text. I mean, as it looks right now, the situation is there’s going to be a two-tier or two-phase constitutional process. There’s going to be a couple of sweeping amendments to introduce the most major changes. And then the idea is that we will have a longer constitutional process, say that lasts about a year, year and a half, that is going to have to be done much later on.

Mr. Jekielek:

And basically what’s being argued here is that this constitution has failed.

Mr. Sulyok:

Yes.

Mr. Jekielek:

What are the major positive amendments or changes that you see as necessary to having a better, a more functioning system? Probably most people agree, right, that it needs to be changed.

Mr. Sulyok:

The dominant narrative about the Constitution and the fundamental law has been that it contains value choices, value statements that are very unilateral. It contains a historical narrative with which not everyone can associate or identify. It contains definitions for notions like family and marriage that are heavily conservative and heavily Fidesz-oriented. So this is why certain commentaries, as I said, called the Constitution, the Constitution of a disunited nation. And possibly these kinds of values will have to be rethought or reconceptualized.

We have a very long preamble that contains a very specific historical narrative of Christianity and its role in preserving nationhood and Saint Stephen and the suspension of our sovereignty through the Soviet occupation, for example, and how we don’t recognize anything in that period, legally speaking, and how we maintain the continuity of our historical constitution with the post-transition constitutions, basically. So that’s one of the points of contention about the constitution.

Obviously, there are other ones as well, but it’s mostly, I think, the framing and the value choices that have caused major problems. Obviously, there are different ideas being floated around about the institutions, how they will change them. This pertains to the discussion about whether the presidents, let’s just call them this way, will resign or not. For example, there’s talk about unifying the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court or creating a French-style constitutional council or state council. So there are a lot of examples that we can look at internationally.

And there’s also talk about changing the form of government, because there is this debate between the president and the prime minister at this point. The point of this is that the argument leans in a way that the president’s powers should be intensified and increased. If this happens, then it eventually brings with it the idea that we might need to change the form of government. Then that will be a complete overhaul of all the checks and balances and everything that we have in place. But it certainly reached a certain level in public discourse that now everyone’s talking about this because the previous president had to resign due to a clemency, a pardon issue, and there was sexual abuse and children involved in that as well. So child protection and clemency are very focal points in wherever the amendments will take us.

Then there’s the person of Orban himself and the office of the prime minister that needs to be rethought as well. The First Amendment that they have filed just a couple of days ago contains what the now opposition has termed Lex Orban, which means that the term of the prime minister will be maximized to two terms, a total of eight years. But we will have to, or if it’s adopted, we would have to take into account past terms in this as well, looking to the future. So as it turns out, currently, of the living prime ministers, it only applies to Orban.

Mr. Jekielek:

So basically, there’s this narrative within which they want to get rid of Orban and make sure he can’t run for office again.

Mr. Sulyok:

Yes. It’s retroactive because, you know, it looks to the past, but it also looks to the future, and retroactive legislation is not something that’s allowed under rule of law standards. And since under the circumstance that it only applies to Orban, the other argument is that it’s so-called personalized legislation, and personalized legislation is also something that’s not allowed under rule of law standards.

Mr. Jekielek:

So it could just be a good idea that suspiciously looks like personalized legislation.

Mr. Sulyok:

Absolutely.

Mr. Jekielek:

Or personalized, is it legislation? Is that the right term?

Mr. Sulyok:

Yes, or lawmaking, really.

Mr. Jekielek:

Yes, because we’re talking about constitutional changes.

Mr. Sulyok:

The idea of limiting the prime minister’s room for maneuver and increasing the president’s powers makes sense, for example, in a semi-presidential system, like the French setting, where both the prime minister and the president share executive power. However, the president is kind of the boss of the prime minister because the prime minister is more internally focused, and the president is more externally focused on relations and nuclear power and whatnot. So, just logically thinking through the possible train of thought, legally speaking, behind the Lex Orban amendment could be an eventual consideration about changing the form of government and looking to other systems that rely on a stronger presidential role.

Because it looks to me that it’s a social expectation that the president be stronger as a veto player and as a check on the abuse of power that’s been committed by or allegedly committed by the previous administration. So, there’s a debate about this. And since we’re in the U.S., it’s a special issue of constitutional politics, I think. I mean, social discourse has increased on this issue, so it has to be dealt with by the players on the field here. It’s normally the court that is best suited to answer these questions. In this case, it would be the constitutional legislator that would have to address this issue and do something with it.

Mr. Jekielek:

But basically, the people have spoken. I mean, 80 percent turnout or something? 83 percent? That happens? I mean, it’s unbelievable.

Mr. Sulyok:

Apparently, it does. It’s a definite win for democracy in the Hungarian sense. If we consider the average turnout for any kind of vote, including referendums as well, it’s between, I want to say, 58 and 68 percent, from past experience. So, 83.13 percent, I think, is the actual number of the total electorate, which is about 8 million people. So, it’s been the biggest mobilization, biggest social mobilization in Hungary’s history. And the result in this sense is self-explanatory.

Mr. Jekielek:

How many of these constitutional amendments have to do with foreign policy? Because one thing from our discussion I can tell already is this is a much more pro-EU administration.

Mr. Sulyok:

Yes. Constitutional amendment-wise, foreign policy broadly understood also includes EU affairs. For example, joining the European Public Prosecutor’s Office would be something that is put into a constitutional amendment because the punitive jurisdiction of Hungary has to be amended in this sense. I’m not sure there are other constitutional amendments that are relevant to foreign policy. There’s legislation that needs to be implemented, for example, if we go back to the case of asset recovery and forfeitures, because those are EU directives that make these recommendations for the member states.

Those would have to be passed through ordinary legislation, and it remains to be seen what other constitutional amendments they would introduce. Concerning the National Office for Asset Recovery, that can either be done through constitutional amendment, which would be a logical thing to do, and also through legislation or a combination of both. But it’s only partly relevant to foreign policy as it relates to the EU laws that would prescribe this.

Mr. Jekielek:

What about immigration?This has been very unusual for the European Union policy direction over the last 16 years.

Mr. Sulyok:

Yes, absolutely.

Mr. Jekielek:

And how is that going to change?

Mr. Sulyok:

Surprisingly, or not, because Magyar was a former Fidesz insider, he seems to agree on a lot of things with Orban in the sense of immigration and refusing the EU’s stance toward immigration quotas, for example. What I’ve read in the program, the Functional and Humane Hungary program, the party’s basic philosophy, is that he’s not in favor of extra-EU immigration. So this possibly means that he’s in favor of intra-EU immigration.

And this might even be relevant to Chinese immigration, although that might fall under a different strategic consideration on their part. But I’m not sure that constitutional amendments have to be made specifically to solidify these policy stances. This can just be realized through legislation as well, but it also remains to be seen.

Mr. Jekielek:

So let’s talk about China a little bit. We have a country of 8 million people, right? And I think it’s between 2022 and 2024, a quarter of all of the foreign direct investment coming to the EU came to Hungary. It seems astonishing to me. The Chinese Communist Party has a very big interest in Hungary.

Mr. Sulyok:

Yes. My hometown where I’m from is now home to the largest BYD factory, I think, in the world, which is going to be the regional distribution hub for the EVs that are going to be manufactured there. Over the many years that I’ve spent in legal academia, I met and taught Chinese student groups from the Shanghai area that have been sent to our law school to study Central European legal studies.

So there’s been a Chinese presence, at least in my region, for a longer period, just in general as well, which then has been obviously, I think, intensified by the connections between the two countries in the policy frame of what they call the Eastern Opening. And I think that just out of necessity, the current administration is going to continue along these lines, although I think less visibly or less vocally.

But there are a lot of jobs that are at stake here. And I think, given the current economic situation of the country as well, the Chinese influx of capital cannot be neglected. But it’s a very complex situation, because on the other hand, we’re fighting the fight with the EU about releasing the funds that they have frozen over their disputes with Orban. And there are other economic considerations as well.

Mr. Jekielek:

This has been very difficult for me to understand, because there is this, you know, Fidesz’s position on the Soviet regime and Soviet occupation of Hungary. I mean, that’s kind of how it’s viewed officially, right? It’s a very strong position, a very clear position. But when it comes to an arguably more dangerous communist regime, there’s this kind of wide-open door, even much more wide open than many European countries, other EU countries, which have pretty wide-open doors themselves. So I don’t understand this. I’m confused by this.

Mr. Sulyok:

And you’re not alone. There is a lot of baggage here, if I can say. I mean, you know, 1956 and the Hungarian revolution against the Soviet oppression, and the memory of that is still living in the hearts and minds of young people as well. And on the other hand, there’s geopolitics. And I’ve often asked this question, and I’ve often been asked this question since I’ve been here—what’s up with Russia?

And I think that there is a network of interconnected economic realities and necessities that make it necessary for everyone in the region to be deferential to Russia, in a sense. And since all of our grids are fixed in that direction, I think the biggest motivation behind Orban being so pro-Russia is out of this economic necessity.

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, and so on the Russia side, I mean, that’s astonishing. But on the China side, is it exactly the same consideration? Because this is an active communist regime, right?

Mr. Sulyok:

Yes, absolutely. No, I should have led with this. You’re right. I mean, there’s a big social movement against the local operations that the Chinese are doing. There are battery factories all over causing all kinds of environmental trouble, for example, and non-compliance with laws has been an issue. There are local movements, like political movements, social movements against these initiatives.

Possibly this is going to be the side of continuing the Chinese connection or cooperation that is going to be focused on and trying to alleviate these local concerns. And this has to be done internally. And as a matter of foreign policy or economic relations-wise, this might actually be a contributing factor to turn down the volume, if I can say it this way, on the Chinese connection.

Mr. Jekielek:

What do you mean by that? I don’t understand.

Mr. Sulyok:

I mean, to tone it down a little.

Mr. Jekielek:

To not have such a strong relationship or to hide the fact that there’s such a strong relationship?

Mr. Sulyok:

I’m not sure about the strength of the relationship as it is, but whatever strength it has, I think it will or it might disappear from public discourse as a point of pride or it will be less emphatic.

Mr. Jekielek:

I see. So this has been something that’s been sort of touted as a great thing, and now that might be more muted.

Mr. Sulyok:

I guess so, yes.

Mr. Jekielek:

Okay, I’m just, forgive me….

Mr. Sulyok:

No, that’s a fair characterization, I would say.

Mr. Jekielek:

I’m just trying to understand.

Mr. Sulyok:

Sure.

Mr. Jekielek:

So I’ve been following the fact that BYD is building this massive factory in Hungary, as reported by a number of pretty prominent China analysts. These BYD vehicles are described as kind of massive sensors and intelligence-gathering tools. There’s this national intelligence law in China, which basically states that anyone under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party is required, if they are so asked by the authorities, to spy and provide intelligence and to make sure they don’t, and they’re not allowed to actually admit that they’re doing it.

This is a concerning combination of thoughts to know. And it makes me concerned, frankly, for the Hungarian people to know this. And I mean, this is just one example. It probably may be the biggest example, but there’s a lot of this type of economic, let’s call it, activity on the Chinese side in Hungary. And I have genuine concern knowing what I know about how the Chinese regime operates.

Mr. Sulyok:

The China issue falls really very far from my area of expertise, but it is definitely a foreign influence issue. And we do have a foreign influence authority in Hungary. It’s called the Sovereignty Protection Office. It was set up in 2024 by Fidesz. And now, in the First Amendment that they filed, the new government wants to get rid of this authority because it didn’t live up to its purpose and it didn’t actually do a lot in terms of foreign influence.

If we consider Russia and China, for example, I tried looking, but there’s really no work that they’ve done on protecting sovereignty in this sense. There have been a lot of problems with creating this authority to begin with as well. I was very critical from very early on when we saw the first legislative draft on how the authority was going to be created. It’s a very politically motivated effort, or it was a very politically motivated effort, to try and protect public debate in Hungary and to try and root out foreign influence over elections. And it was supposed to have, and it still does, monitoring activities in this sense.

But there were a lot of flaws with the law itself. Like I said, for example, there are a lot of blogs in Hungary that communicate opinions from foreigners. And there was a section in the law that said opinions influencing the public debate in Hungary about democracy also fall under the purview of investigations that this authority has. Investigation is the wrong word because it wasn’t really an investigative kind of power, so it was not a law enforcement agency in this sense, but this is how it made it into the public domain, so this is obviously a free speech issue.

This is just to say that the legislative text had a lot of problems. In terms of monitoring, they have what is called a sovereignty monitor that’s regularly being published, but there are a lot of domestic issues mingled into this, certain opinions about sovereignty. There’s a bit of Ukraine focus as well, and then mostly EU focus and Western Europe and American focus as well. But the actually problematic areas of foreign influence, Russia and China, as you’ve mentioned, have never been in the purview of this authority, or they might have been; they just didn’t make it to the public domain, I don’t know. It’s relevant at this point because they are going to move to get rid of it.

And the other thing, while this authority seemed to be redundant, at least at first sight, is because we do have law enforcement agencies and investigative agencies that work to protect Hungary against undue influences on its sovereignty, the Constitution Protection Office, for example, being one. So at this point, once the amendment goes through, these powers will possibly revert to the original agencies that had them, and then they will operate under the National Security Advisor or the minister in charge of the prime minister’s office, which used to be the situation. There might be overlaps in this, but it remains to be seen how the new laws will be drafted.

The Sovereignty Protection Office is also looked at as a political product of the Orban regime, so they will get rid of it but still preserve the powers, or if not preserve them, transform them in a way that it might actually be a good tool against monitoring foreign influence. The initial idea, in American terms, because I forgot to put this in American terms, but there is a very good parallel, is the Foreign Agents Registration Act [FARA], basically. In 1938, it started operating. I mean, the relevant structure started operating in 1942, up to the American model of trying to monitor foreign influence.

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, I think right now there’s an increased interest in using FARA, which is what it’s called. A lot of people didn’t register that perhaps should have. This is one of the discussions here. Let’s talk about one more thing that I’m very interested in. What about U.S.-Hungary relations? How important is the U.S. to Hungary?

Mr. Sulyok:

I think that the current administration and its foreign policy and foreign service is very much to my liking. I can say that for about 16 years I prayed that the Atlanticist, classical, traditional, multilateral style of diplomacy would return to the Foreign Service or the State Department, I can say it this way for our American audience, and it did.

But I think the timing is bad in a sense that if we follow American politics, we know that the current administration is not a fan of multilateralism or of international organizations. And this means to me, at least, that there’s going to be a disconnect, not just because of this change, but also due to the fact that there’s no connection between the two countries on the executive level, at least not yet.

President Trump very quickly distanced himself from Orban. Just one day after the election, he gave an interview where he said, Viktor was a good man. And then three days later, he gave an interview in which he said Magyar is a good man. So he’s now focusing on the new guy, as he put it. And he’s now focusing his attention on what maybe he can build with him. But I’m not sure that he wants to, simply because of this about-face in the worldview of the two administrations on multilateral diplomacy.

One key issue in this, I think we already talked about this, is the ICC. While Orban announced that they are going to exit the International Criminal Court, the new government rolled back on this, and they said that they’re going to remain in the court. Although, if you follow American politics, you’re well aware of the fact that in February 2025, the U.S. President issued sanctions against the ICC. So we can’t say that he’s a fan. So I’m sure that there’s going to be a price to pay in this sense for this action or for this move if we consider the grand scheme of things, but it remains to be seen what this will actually be.

I am very pleased that the foreign service or the ministry or the department itself is headed by who it’s headed by at this point. We share a mentor because her former boss was also my law school professor. So I know the values that he’s ingrained into me, and I’m sure that the same happened with her as well. So to me, this is a guarantee that the department itself is in good hands, but there are geopolitical realities and just the realities of the world that might actually be a challenging factor going forward.

If I can give a short summary to the question itself, I think that Hungary might become a strategic ally in a couple of sectors like energy or defense industry, innovation, tourism even, but that’s it. So there’s not going to be such an intense relationship between the executives, and therefore, obviously, the ranking of Hungary among your American allies will be just a lower grade than it used to be before. I think that would be my answer.

Mr. Jekielek:

So to summarize, you don’t think the new Hungarian government will be pursuing as strong a relationship with the United States.

Mr. Sulyok:

I’m not sure they might pursue it, but they might not get it. Just one thing to add to this. The current head of the State Department has extensive connections and experience in the U.S. She went to the Fletcher School. She was a former U.S. diplomat. So she’s deeply ingrained in the policy sphere and in diplomacy as well. But like I said, it might be bad timing is all.

Mr. Jekielek:

Hungary, over the last 16 years, has been trying to fix the population decline problem in a whole variety of ways. And it has been—it’s tried a whole lot of things. It hasn’t been terribly successful, but it’s been trying very hard and a lot more than most other countries that I’m aware of. So is this something you expect to continue, or is this something that’s going to go away?

Mr. Sulyok:

If the whole area of policy and of thinking about this is tainted simply because it was a Fidesz product. The conversation about this issue became more emphatic in the past 16 years under Fidesz’s rule, then it might just entirely go away. But it’s not something that people can really disregard.

Hungary is very interesting in this sense, because, for example, abortion has never been a hot topic, like a hot-button political issue, like here in the U.S. I mean, you can topple governments if you touch abortion regulations here. We’ve had a couple of pieces of legislation in the early 90s that have been looked at by our constitutional court. There have been two decisions, and people basically largely accepted whatever has been said by the court.

Our law is pretty liberal, actually, in a sense that it combines a lot of possibilities allowing for termination of pregnancy. So that’s one of the issues. And then the other is the actual decline of the population and how Fidesz tried to reshape family policy around this and try to change the numbers. However, if we really look at this objectively, I think the market actually caught on to these policy initiatives that Fidesz tried and introduced. And there was a lot of support, public financial support.

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, yes. I mean, for example, for every kid you have, you know, reduced tax burden. That was one example, a very interesting example.

Mr. Sulyok:

But tax cuts and tax breaks is one thing, because that might actually be beneficial in the long run. But in order to incentivize or motivate child rearing and childbearing, they actually provided financial support from the public budget to families who undertook one, two, or three children over the course of such and such years. I think 10 was the most for three children.

And then they’ve been given a large amount of money by the state under the burden of having to pay it back. I mean, it’s a strange word to use if they couldn’t produce three children over that period of time. But once the market caught on to the amount of money that the state is giving to these families, obviously, they have raised the prices of raw materials. In the meantime, amidst all of this, we’ve had COVID break out and we’ve had the war, and both of them disrupted supply chains, and raw material costs have obviously gone up on their own as well.

So this kind of created a cascade effect where the housing market just kind of plummeted. Everything’s very expensive, and people don’t have the money to afford a lot of things. And obviously, people who are in these situations, these situations meaning that they’ve previously received money from the state, are in a debt trap, sort of. Because if they are not going to be able to have children, then they will have to pay it back. I mean, the original intent and the original idea might have been very well thought through in like a 12 to 15-year perspective. But I think nobody in the administration could have predicted COVID and the war breaking out and having these long-lasting effects on the economy.

Mr. Jekielek:

Yes, it’s always about second-order effects when you start, as you describe it, right, manipulating the market. That’s fascinating. I mean, this is something I’ve respected a lot in the Hungarian government, this interest, and I’m very curious. There’s only one country that I’m aware of that has actually managed to change that, you know, sort of in post-communist time, increase the birth rate, and that’s Mongolia. A very interesting way they did that, but I don’t know if it’s applicable to Western countries.

Mr. Sulyok:

It might be. I am not familiar. No idea.

Mr. Jekielek:

That’s a different discussion. So here we are today. There’s a process of constitutional change that has been initiated already. It’s supposed to take a year. And there’s an expectation, I think, from everything you’ve told me that there will be something solid in a constitutional sense that isn’t going to require an amendment a year going forward. So what risks do you see here? What potential wins do you see here as we finish up?

Mr. Sulyok:

It’s a great question. I would really like to think that we will have a constitution that doesn’t require an amendment a year because it would mean that we no longer live in a world that has exigent circumstances that make amendment necessary so frequently. But if we go under the assumption that many people from legal academia have also floated that we need to, after the initial sweeping amendments, have a longer constitutional process. I’ve heard people write a year, a year-and-a-half, would be the best-case scenario. In comparison, Fidesz’s constitution-making that went down in public took 11 months, and it was criticized for being too short.

Now they say a year is going to be enough, but let’s operate under the assumption that it will be enough. It can be influenced by the fact that, this is my personal view on the matter, the current four-fifths majority can easily decrease to two-thirds or even less, because if the Tisza Party loses about nine of its representatives at this point, and they start acting as independents, for example, then they will lose the constitution-making majority. Obviously, political deals can still be made for the reforms to go through, but this could definitely act as a brake in this process. That’s why I’m saying that the actual number of representatives that is necessary to modify and adopt the constitution would have to be a debate, would have to be a necessary part of the debate that is conducted about the Constitution. This goes back to the earlier conversation that we had. We only know the two-thirds rule. Now they have four-fifths. We have to prevent a situation where this kind of change ends up being a, I call it, pendulum reflex, an exaggerated overcorrection of the mistakes of the past simply because we can do it. And maybe there’s going to be a lot of debates about this mindset. We are the good guys, they are the bad guys. So now we have to, you know, remedy everything that they did. And as a result of these debates, possibly some seats may be lost, and then this might eventually influence the constitution-making majority.

Mr. Jekielek:

And what is your dream scenario?

Mr. Sulyok:

Oh, that’s a very good question. I haven’t really thought about it. The dream scenario would be to make the constitution a little bit more friendly to the European Union. It’s also been suggested by many people in academia. EU friendliness is what it’s called. Trying to accommodate certain facets of the multi-level governance that we have in the EU. It’s very hard to put this in an American perspective because the American federal system is a dual sovereign and the EU is not. The member states are sovereign and they give up certain competences for the EU to exercise, but it’s very often described as a quasi-federal system and federalization is very strong. It, however, operates very differently. So it’s a different conversation, but that could be one of the points that could be developed, for example.

If they end up changing the form of government, or at least thinking about this, it would be very important to focus on the historical examples that we’ve had, like the U.S. or France, for example, in terms of a lot of institutional changes and checks and balances. Those can be good examples, very foreign to the post-Soviet territory, in a sense, especially in such a settled parliamentary tradition that we have in Hungary. But the people definitely have voted for a change. So there are a lot of directions that this may actually go into. I think this would be my answer.

Mr. Jekielek:

So a little bit more EU friendliness and a constitution which really puts in place serious checks and balances.

Mr. Sulyok:

Yes, but also reflects on history. Personally, I didn’t really have any problem with the historical narrative of the current one. But if there’s a majority of the electorate that does have a problem with it, then they should have a chance at defining their own historical narrative of the thousands of years of Hungarian history. And maybe that will then be an actual constitution of national reunification.

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, Marton Sulyok, it’s such a pleasure to have had you on.

Mr. Sulyok:

Thank you very much for the stimulating conversation. I enjoyed it very much.

 

This interview has been partially edited for clarity and brevity.