The Hungarian-run TISZA indicated 73-year-old András Baka, erstwhile president of the ultimate Court, as a presidential candidate. The vote in the National Assembly was scheduled for 11 August, and Fidesz Viktor Orbán announced a boycott. For Poland this is not an exotic curiosity from Budapest, but a lesson on how easy fighting for institutions can become a fight for full power.
Candidate with judicial biography
The parliamentary club of the TISZA organization Prime Minister Péter Magyar identified András Baka as a candidate for the office of president of Hungary. According to RMF24, citing PAP, the decision was made at the club's Saturday meeting, and the parliamentary vote is due on Tuesday 11 August.
Baka is 73 years old and is 1 of the most recognizable figures in the dispute over Hungarian judiciary. From 1991 to 2008, he was a justice of the European Court of Human Rights for Hungary. In 2009, he was elected president of the Hungarian ultimate Court and president of the National Judicial Council.
His word was six years. However, it ended in January 2012 after constitutional changes carried out by Viktor Orbán's camp. The ultimate Court was then replaced by Curia and the fresh formal requirements excluded Baka from further directing the ultimate judicial authority. Grand Chamber of the ECHR on Bak v Hungary On June 23, 2016, she declared a violation of his rights.
President after constitutional solstice
The current choice is not made in vacuum. Tamás Sulyok, elected president in 2024 by Fidesz votes, ended his word on 20 July after the entry into force of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. He had previously signed the amendment, which provided, among another things, for its removal from office. About Hungarian parliament shortened president Sulyok's word of officeWe wrote in July.
Under Hungarian rules, the fresh head of state elects parliament in a secret ballot. At least 2 thirds of the composition of the chamber is required to choose. TISZA has 141 seats in the 199-member National Assembly, so it itself has a majority adequate to carry out the decision. Technically, arithmetic is on Magyar's side.
Fidesz, however, considers the dismissal of Sulyok to be illegal and announces the boycott of the vote. This sets the full case not as a specified individual nomination, but as another act of deep political solstice after the Orbán era.
Brussels cannot be the sole justice of sovereignty
From the Polish position you must look at Budapest soberly. Hungary has for years been an example for many right-wing groups of strong defence of national interest against Brussels pressure, political correctness and migration pressure. This accomplishment does not vanish just due to the fact that the another majority has taken over. But the nation state does not live by the legend of 1 leader alone.
If the constitution becomes a tool to rapidly cut people out of offices, even political opponents, then the authority of the state itself is weakening. Sovereignty requires permanence, but besides continuity. The nation needs institutions that will not be prescribed winners all fewer years.
This does not mean to delight the European tribunals or blind belief in the liberal language of the regulation of law. Brussels frequently uses these slogans selectively, as a tool of emphasis on governments not matching the ideological pattern. The Polish right knows this mechanics besides well. But the answer can't be to ignore the rules at home. The answer must be the own national standard of the regulation of law: without dictatorship from outside and without organization voluntarianism.
Test for Magyar
Péter Magyar has been given a mandate to change Hungary, but present he himself must show whether he understands the burden of the state. Baki's election has a symbolic dimension: the erstwhile president of the ultimate Court returns to the centre of public life as a candidate for head of state. For some, it will be to repair the harm from years ago. For others, especially Fidesz, proof of political rematch.
That's why the stakes are higher than the name of 1 lawyer. The question is whether the fresh power can build the authority of the president over the logic of retaliation. Hungarian dispute between Orbán, opposition and war He has already shown that Budapest remains 1 of the most crucial policy laboratories in our part of Europe.
For Poland, the proposal is simple. We must not give sovereignty to Brussels, Berlin or any tribunal that wishes to compose us a strategy under its own ideology. But it is besides forbidden to disassemble its own institutions so that any change in the majority resembles the replacement of locks in the occupied building. The state is expected to last longer than the parties. Otherwise, the nation pays the bill for others' victories.
Source: RMF24/PAP, == sync, corrected by elderman ==, HUDOC ETPC
