Removal of high public office holders: international standards and legal options
In his victory speech following the April parliamentary elections, the future prime minister called on the high public office holders appointed and entrenched over the past sixteen years to resign. As those concerned have not yet resigned, the new government is expected to replace them through legislative measures, within the framework of the rule of law, as promised by the prime minister. How can this be achieved? In our background paper, we have compiled the international standards that are applicable in similar situations and that the Hungarian government must also adhere to.
On the night of the parliamentary elections, Péter Magyar, the Tisza party’s since elected candidate for prime minister, declared in his victory speech that the scale of authorization granted by the voters would make the change of government a change of regime as well: the functioning of the rule of law, systematically undermined while the Fidesz government was in power, would be restored, and the illiberal political system would be driven back to a democratic track. That necessitates the replacement of those important public office holders who, by heading the institutions destined in principle to counterbalance the government and safeguard constitutionality, actively contributed to maintaining Fidesz in power and to an unlimited exercise of governmental authority. Accordingly, Péter Magyar called on the President of the Republic, the President of the Kúria (Supreme Court), the President of the National Office for the Judiciary, the Prosecutor General, the President of the Constitutional Court, the President of the State Audit Office, the President of the Competition Authority, and the President of the Media Council to resign. He set the deadline of 31 May for the persons addressed to resign, and declared that in case they do not leave their offices voluntarily, they would be removed by legal means. He has since repeated his call multiple times.
The deadline for resignation has expired without any change, none of the persons concerned has resigned so far, and, accordingly, the governing majority will probably take the necessary steps to remove high public office holders, and will elect new persons to their office. The government has undertaken to ensure that the procedures will conform to rule of law standards. That commitment is necessary for the restoration of the rule of law, but implementing it is far from being simple. Namely, the procedures must be in conformity with Hungarian constitutional principles and also with international and EU standards.
International and EU jurisprudence (decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and the EU Court of Justice), and also opinions handed down by international monitoring organizations (Venice Commission, OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights), discuss the requirement of the irremovability of high public office holders in an array of contexts when it is applied as part of the erosion of the rule of law and with the aim to undermine checks and balances. In contrast, no international or EU criteria have been fully developed yet concerning the removability of high public office holders as part of the restoration of the rule of law, as this is a novel and exceptional situation in Europe. Within the European Union a similar procedure has been going on in Poland since 2023, but so far there have been only a few cases that yielded international documents containing specific guidelines, so it is very difficult to draw any conclusions as to the desirable mode of the repair in Hungary.
In our background paper, we provide an overview of the criteria that, based on available international and EU sources, must be taken into account when a decision is made to replace high public office holders. In case of the three highest-ranking public offices most relevant for rebuilding the rule of law, i.e. the President of the Republic, the President of the Kúria, and the constitutional court justices, we provide the details of the specific legal solutions for removal that would be viable in light of the abovementioned standards. With respect to the fact that no rule of law restoration similar to the one envisaged by the new Hungarian governmental majority has taken place yet, and, accordingly, no corresponding overall international assessment is available, we complement our survey by referring to the opinions of legal experts who have already expressed their views on the issue.
If the Hungarian government intends to keep its promise to apply only solutions that are compatible with the requirements of the rule of law, it must comply with the international and EU standards thus outlined. Indeed, the restoration of the rule of law, being an exceptional situation, provides strong and justifiable grounds for the government to derogate from the general rule of irremovability by adopting a unique, exceptional measure accompanied by due guarantees; however, the restoration as an objective cannot in itself justify ignoring the guarantees of the rule of law.
Read the full background paper:
International standards and legal options regarding the removal of high public office holders (15 June 2026)
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