Hungarian lawmakers approved former supreme court chief András Baka as the country's new president on Tuesday, marking a symbolic break with Viktor Orbán's 16-year authoritarian legacy. The ruling Tisza party, which holds a two-thirds majority in parliament, elected the 73-year-old with 140 votes in favour and six against.
Prime Minister Péter Magyar, whose party won elections in April by a landslide, said Baka's life served "as an example of commitment to the democratic rule of law and constitutional principles." He added that Hungary needs to be "guided back onto the path of the rule of law and constitutional governance." The appointment comes after Magyar's controversial constitutional amendment last month cut short the mandate of previous president Tamás Sulyok — a move rights watchdogs compared to the very methods Orbán used to build his self-styled "illiberal" system.
A Judge Who Fought Back
Baka's appointment carries profound symbolic weight. In 2009, he was nominated as head of the Supreme Court. But three years later, Orbán's government ousted him after he condemned a move to reduce the mandatory retirement age for judges from 70 to 62 — a shift he called a judicial purge. The European Union and the United States both called the age-limit reduction illegal. In 2016, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Baka's dismissal violated his freedom of expression.
Bulcsu Zsiga, from the Centre for Fair Political Analysis, said installing Baka as president signals a "guarantee that the restoration of liberal democracy will proceed along a clearly defined path." He added: "His nomination also carries a symbolic meaning, given that Baka went all the way to prove that what happened to him was not really in line with European Union norms."
Baka himself framed the moment in stark terms. "In a country governed by the rule of law, such extraordinary measures cannot be used, but Hungary became a captured state under Orbán," he said. He added that state officials like the president "were appointed not to restrain the government's power, but to ensure the political survival of the former system even after an electoral defeat."
Opposition Boycotts, Citing 'Tyranny'
Orbán's Fidesz party, along with its ally KDNP, boycotted the parliamentary vote. They argued Sulyok's ouster was "tyrannical" and "illegitimate." The irony wasn't lost on observers: Fidesz spent years dismantling judicial independence, stacking courts with loyalists, and rewriting the constitution to entrench its power. Now it accuses Magyar of the same tactics.
Baka had a brief stint as a lawmaker after Hungary's democratic transition in 1990, elected from the conservative Hungarian Democratic Forum's party list. Otherwise, he didn't hold political positions. He served as a judge at the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights from 1991 to 2008.
Temporary Mandate, Constitutional Rewrite Ahead
Magyar has indicated the new president would serve only part of his term — until the completion of a process to replace the Orbán-era Basic Law with a constitution drafted through wide public participation. Magyar has estimated rewriting the constitution would take one or one and a half years, and he promised to launch consultations on it next month.
Last month, Magyar offered the nomination as president to chess legend Judit Polgar, but she declined after the prime minister faced mounting outrage for not consulting the public as promised. The misstep highlighted the tensions within Magyar's reform push: how do you dismantle an authoritarian system without replicating its methods?
Why This Matters:
Baka's election is a test case for post-authoritarian transitions in Europe. Can a government that won a landslide mandate to restore democracy do so through extraordinary measures — or does that risk legitimising the very tactics it seeks to dismantle? The appointment of a judge who fought Orbán's judicial purge and won at the European Court of Human Rights sends a clear signal: Hungary intends to rejoin the community of European democracies governed by the rule of law. But the rushed removal of Sulyok and the initial failure to consult the public on Polgar's nomination reveal the fragility of that process. The constitutional rewrite ahead will determine whether Magyar's "system change" becomes a genuine restoration of liberal democracy — or another chapter in Hungary's long struggle between democratic norms and political expediency. For the EU, which spent years battling Orbán over judicial independence and media freedom, Baka's appointment offers cautious hope that one of its most problematic member states may finally be turning a corner.