Statement from Sándor Palace regarding the Seventeenth Amendment to the Fundamental Law Dr Tamás Sulyok, President of Hungary, makes the following statement in connection with the tabling of the Seventeenth Amendment to the Fundamental Law. The proposed amendment to the Fundamental Law violates the principles of the rule of law, democracy and the separation of powers in a number of respects. By virtue of his constitutional role, the President of Hungary—operating outside the three branches of government, namely the legislative, executive, and judicial branches—is an independent constitutional authority bearing no political responsibility within the system of checks and balances. Accordingly, the President cannot act in place of the executive or any other branch of government. It is unprecedented in Europe for a sitting President to be removed from office on purely political grounds, in open violation of the constitutional guarantees safeguarding the autonomy of the office of the President, through a provision inserted into the final provisions of an amendment to the Fundamental Law in a manner unmistakably tailored to a specific individual. An important safeguard for the fulfilment of the President’s constitutional role is that the Constitutional Court is the sole body authorised to remove the Head of State from office, and this may only take place on specific grounds, namely for the deliberate violation of the Fundamental Law or the statutes, or for the commission of a criminal offence. Tamás Sulyok points out that, since 1990, Presidents of Hungary have been legitimately elected by the National Assembly, the supreme body representing the people, through a procedure that has remained essentially unchanged. The office of the President of Hungary has, until now, operated within a stable constitutional framework. The Seventeenth Amendment to the Fundamental Law disrupts that framework. The Head of State taking office under the amended constitutional framework will assume office as the successor to a constitutionally elected President who was removed by means contrary to the rule of law and, in consequence, will take office effectively as the nominee and political appointee of the political majority that removed the sitting President. By giving this procedure legal recognition, any President of Hungary is made dependent on the political majority that elected him, as he may henceforth be removed from office whenever his continued tenure no longer serves the political objectives of the governing majority However, it is not only the institution of the President that is undermined, but all independent branches of government, as the Seventeenth Amendment to the Fundamental Law sets a precedent under which the head or any member of an independent constitutional body may be removed at any time by an ad hoc decision and, in the case of Members of Parliament, their re-election may be precluded. This leads not to the separation of powers but to the concentration of power; not to the restoration of the rule of law but to arbitrariness. A constitutional democracy cannot be built on the open disregard of constitutional rules. The Head of State notes that, although the ruling party invokes a special mandate, neither the indisputable democratic mandate behind the party nor any other democratic mandate entitles a governing majority to infringe upon fundamental constitutional principles or fundamental rights. Tamás Sulyok draws attention to the fact that the possibility of the draft being adopted jeopardises Hungarian constitutional democracy, which is based on the achievements of the system change and on European values.(Dr. Tamás Sulyok)