On April 14, 2025, the Hungarian parliament passed the 15th Amendment to the Fundamental Law, including new provisions allowing for the suspension of citizenship. Alongside the newly introduced Citizenship Suspension Law, the framework’s vague and expansive criteria provide the government with a powerful instrument to strip political opponents of their right to vote ahead of the 2026 parliamentary election - despite official claims to the contrary.
On April 14, 2025, the Hungarian parliament passed the 15th Amendment to the Fundamental Law, triggering mass protest across Budapest. Amongst its most far-reaching provisions is the constitutional entrenchment of binary sex. Read alongside a reworded Article XVI, which affirms that “every child has the right to the protection and care necessary for his or her proper physical, mental, and moral development”, these provisions establish a new hierarchy of fundamental rights, placing child protection above all others, including the right to peaceful assembly. These changes may now lend formal constitutional legitimacy to discriminatory legislation seeking to ban Pride Parades.
The planned 10th amendment to the Hungarian constitution aims to rewrite the current rules of Article 53, which allows the government to declare a state of danger (and rule by decree as it did during the last two years) in the event of a natural or industrial disaster endangering lives and property, or to mitigate the consequences thereof. According to the proposed new rules, the government will also be able to declare this kind of emergency ‘in the event of armed conflict, war or humanitarian catastrophe in a neighbouring country’. This is just the latest chapter in the story of the democratic and rule-of-law backsliding in Hungary.
13. September 2025
Giovanni Capoccia
12. September 2025
Anne Peters
12. September 2025
Anne Peters