BUDAPEST – Péter Magyar, Hungary’s prime minister, has submitted his first constitutional amendment, proposing retroactive term limits for prime ministers and a sweeping state takeover of university foundations in a bid to unlock frozen EU funds.

The amendment – submitted on Wednesday evening by Tisza MPs including Magyar’s brother-in-law Márton Melléthei-Barna – would introduce a strict eight-year limit for prime ministers.

Crucially, the restriction would apply retroactively to all mandates served since 1990 – effectively barring Viktor Orbán, the former prime minister, who governed for a combined 20 years, from ever returning to office.

However the retroactive measure triggered criticism from legal experts.

Liberal International lawyer Tamás Lattmann dismissed the proposal as poorly drafted, arguing it failed to address basic constitutional questions, including what would happen if a president nominated a candidate who had already exceeded the limit or if an incumbent crossed the threshold mid-term.

“This drafting is crap,” Lattmann wrote, adding that while the populist measure might appeal politically, it remained legally incoherent.

Publicist and former journalist András Hont also criticised the proposal, arguing term limits make little sense in a parliamentary system where political power ultimately depends on control over parliamentary candidate selection.

Despite the criticism, the amendment is virtually guaranteed to pass given Tisza’s 71% parliamentary supermajority. President Tamás Sulyok could temporarily delay the legislation by returning it to parliament, but if lawmakers adopt the unchanged text a second time, he would be constitutionally required to sign it.

MCC on the spot

The proposal also targets Hungary’s controversial “public interest asset management foundations” – known as KEKVAs in Hungarian – created under the previous Fidesz government.

Those 34 foundations currently control major state assets, including 21 universities, the elite Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) and the foundation of Nobel laureate Ferenc Krausz.

Tisza’s amendment would reclassify KEKVA assets as “national wealth”, transfer rights back to the state and allow the government to dissolve the foundations entirely.

Reforming the KEKVA system is one of the European Commission’s conditions for unfreezing Hungary’s €10.4 billion share of the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility.

But the proposed re-nationalisation has alarmed critics over property rights and state overreach.

Balázs Orbán, the Mathias Corvinus Collegium board chair unrelated to the former prime minister, described the move as a “shocking attempt to nationalise” private assets that would be “unacceptable even in a soft dictatorship”.

Hont also warned the amendment could create a dangerous precedent by allowing any future two-thirds parliamentary majority to redefine private foundation assets as state property.

(cs, bw)