Legal experts on why removing senior public officials who remain in office would be justified

A group of university professors and researchers issued an open letter in support of the removal of senior public officials appointed during the previous Orbán governments who still remain in office. The statement from the legal scholars came after Prime Minister Péter Magyar has repeatedly called on the President of the Republic, the Prosecutor General, and the presidents of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court, among others, to resign, warning that if they did not step down, Parliament would remove them by amending the Fundamental Law.

The authors of the letter stressed that although the power of the two-thirds parliamentary majority is not unlimited,

the removal of these officials in this extraordinary situation is both legally and morally justifiable.

According to their reasoning, the officials in question have not served the rule of law during the recent period, but have instead played an active role in establishing and maintaining an authoritarian single-person regime. Through their decisions and even omissions, they bear responsibility for systemic financial abuses and widespread rights violations. Since these leaders remained loyal to the dismantled system to the very end, the legal scholars argue that they have irrevocably become discredited, and their continued presence would make the restoration of a democratic rule of law impossible.

At the same time, the experts urged the current parliamentary majority to exercise restraint when making personnel changes. They call for avoiding the “tricky,” farcical legal solutions characteristic of the previous era and recommend that urgent personnel changes not be accompanied by a hasty restructuring of the state apparatus.

According to the letter, the selection of new, credible, and impartial leaders of public institutions must take place through a public process involving professional bodies, so that this extraordinary measure truly serves the restoration of the system of checks and balances.

On April 12, the Tisza Party secured a comfortable two-thirds majority, and Péter Magyar immediately called on several high-ranking public servants to resign. He gave President Tamás Sulyok until May 31 to step down, but the President decided not to resign. The next day, the PM visited Sulyok in person and then announced that, with their two-thirds majority, they would amend the Fundamental Law to restore the rule of law in Hungary.