The 15th Amendment of the Hungarian Fundamental Law: Advancing Illiberal Christian Democracy

Editor's Note: For analysis of the 14th constitutional amendment, see Erika Farkas, ‘Hungary’s 14th Constitutional Amendment: Cementing the Incremental Political Takeover of Judicial Power’ on ConstitutionNet.

In April 2025, the Hungarian Parliament passed the 15th Amendment to the Fundamental Law, reinforcing traditional gender definitions, protecting children’s rights, enshrining the right to pay with cash, introducing the possibility of suspending the citizenship of dual citizens, and adjusting the government’s emergency powers. Though seemingly fragmented, the amendment appears to advance illiberal Christian democracy, running contrary to European human rights standards and Hungary’s international obligations — writes Renáta Uitz

Introduction

On 14 April 2025, the Hungarian Parliament passed the 15th Amendment to the Fundamental Law, Hungary’s constitution. The same day, the amendment was signed into law by President Sulyok and published in the Official Journal, roughly a year before the next general elections due in 2026.

The 15th Amendment is an omnibus bill, affecting seemingly unrelated provisions of the Fundamental Law. Some of the changes follow statements made by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. For instance, in his State of the Nation address on 22 February 2025, he called for the protection of children by unorthodox means: ‘Let us write into the Constitution that a person is either male or female. Full stop.’ The bill to amend the Fundamental Law to this effect was tabled on 11 March 2025. Thereafter, in his 15 March speech commemorating the 1848 revolution, Orbán announced an “Easter cleaning” to remove “stinkbugs” (poloska) such as ‘politicians, judges, journalists, bogus civil society organisations and political activists’ financed by “corrupt dollars”. The 15th Amendment opens new opportunities in this respect. Civil society organizations described the 15th Amendment as one among multiple recent government measures aiming to induce fear through legislation.

[...] the 15th Amendment is the most consequential overhaul of the Fundamental Law since the adoption of the comprehensive 4th Amendment in 2013 [...].

Although it appears fragmented at first, the 15th Amendment is the most consequential overhaul of the Fundamental Law since the adoption of the comprehensive 4th Amendment in 2013, which curtailed the powers of the Constitutional Court and reasserted government control over key institutions just a year before the Orbán government, elected in 2010, was to face the polls in 2014. This latest overhaul advances illiberal Christian democracy, in the spirit of the emerging post-liberal world order. On the day when the bill of the 15th Amendment was tabled in the Hungarian Parliament, a leading Hungarian governmental institution, the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, joined forces with a conservative Polish think tank Ordo Iuris to launch a report on reforming the European Union and restoring Member States’ sovereignty.

The 15th Amendment: Overview

The 15th Amendment contains a series of provisions concerning fundamental rights. For example, it brings the terminology on disability in Article XV(5) of the Fundamental Law in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The Fundamental Law [...] is amended to include the sentence "[a] human is either male or female".

Further provisions on fundamental rights relate—arguably—to the protection of the nation’s survival and flourishing. Article L(1) of the Fundamental Law on marriage and families is amended to include the sentence ‘[a] human is either male or female’, exactly what Orbán proposed in his State of the Nation address. The preamble of the bill explains that this language reflects “the order of Creation”, a comment that was ultimately removed from the adopted text.

In addition, Article XVI(1) of the Fundamental Law, which states that ‘[e]very child has the right to the protection and care necessary for his or her physical, mental and moral development’ was amended to include the sentence ‘[t]his right takes precedence over all other fundamental rights, with the exception of the right to life.’ In doing so, this amendment alters the hierarchy of fundamental rights. Although Article II of the Fundamental Law declares that ‘[h]uman dignity shall be inviolable’, by making children’s rights only second in line after the protection of the right to life, this amendment potentially removes human dignity from its constitutional pedestal or at least provides the Constitutional Court with an opening to change its longstanding jurisprudence treating human dignity as a “mother right”, following the German model.

This amendment might initially appear to protect the best interest of the child, in the spirit of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, in the Hungarian context, it serves to reinforce the existing constitutional obligation to ‘protect the right of children to a self-identity corresponding to their sex at birth’ and to ‘ensure an upbringing for them that is in accordance with the values based on the constitutional identity and Christian culture of our country’ (Article XVI(1) of the Fundamental Law). This runs counter to states’ obligation to abstain from imposing restrictions on children’s access to information about same-sex relationships ‘where there is no basis in any other respect to consider such information to be inappropriate or harmful to children’s growth and development’, as set out by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Macaté v Lithuania.

Another provision with grave consequences for individual liberty creates the possibility to suspend the Hungarian citizenship of dual citizens. Unless further implementing legislation is passed, it is difficult to gauge the scope and potential application of this new rule. Until then, this amendment is meant to put dual citizens on notice not to interfere in Hungarian politics, creating a chilling effect.

Depending on future implementing legislation, [the amendment] is likely to adversely affect the Roma population [...].

Further, a batch of provisions relates to the protection of sovereignty, on a symbolic and pragmatic level. On the symbolic level, the amendment introduces a right to cash payments as a protected aspect of the right to property (Article XIII(1) of the Fundamental Law). In doing so, the amendment aligns with recent efforts to constitutionalise the right to cash. It was inspired by a similar populist Slovak constitutional amendment, which seeks to prevent the decline in cash use and availability, under suspicion that corporations or foreign powers (such as the EU) plan to extinguish cash to facilitate control of states and citizens. Since, unlike Slovakia, Hungary is outside the Eurozone, this amendment is of largely symbolic significance, reinforcing the country’s attachment to a tangible everyday object carrying the insignia of its statehood and historic grandeur. On a pragmatic level, a more consequential provision imposes a new restriction on the right to choose one’s place of residence in the name of protecting local communities’ right to their identity. This provision aims to preserve local communities’ way of life, traditions and social structure. Depending on future implementing legislation, it is likely to adversely affect the Roma population by impairing their physical and socio-economic mobility.

Furthermore, a complete ban on drugs was added to the provision on the right to health (Article XX(3) of the Fundamental Law) in the name of protecting public order and public health. Depending on further implementing legislation and regulations, this sounds like the premise of expanded law enforcement powers, including surveillance, to address organized crime.

This means that emergency decrees can be used to restrict political rights as the 2026 general elections season kicks off.

Lastly, the 15th Amendment adjusts the government's emergency decree powers under Article 53(1) of the Fundamental Law. As of 1 January 2026, in emergency situations referred to as “state of danger” the government will need a two-thirds majority vote in Parliament to issue emergency decrees to  ‘suspend the application of certain Acts, derogate from the provisions of Acts, and take other extraordinary measures’. In accordance with the implementing legislation (Act No. XCIII of 2021 on the coordination of defence and security activities), the government’s emergency decree powers can be used to impose restrictions in the name of protecting the legal order, public order or public safety. This means that emergency decrees can be used to restrict political rights as the 2026 general elections season kicks off.

Right after the adoption of the 15th Amendment, the Parliament also amended the Act No. XCIII of 2021 on the coordination of defence and security activities to provide that emergency decrees can depart from statutes or suspend their application but cannot repeal legislation. This limitation on emergency decree powers was most likely introduced to prevent a new government—should one take office following the 2026 elections during a state of emergency—from using such decrees to repeal existing statutes. Hungary has been in some form of emergency situation since 2016, first in response to the migration crisis, followed by the Covid-19 pandemic, and later due to the war in Ukraine. The ongoing state of emergency is unlikely to be lifted ahead of the 2026 elections, as doing so would repeal all emergency decrees currently in place.

Advancing the Constitutional Script of Illiberal Christian Democracy

Fragmented as this list of changes appears, when read in its broader political context, the 15th Amendment contributes to the overhaul of the Hungarian constitutional order as an illiberal Christian democracy.

Orbán first shared his commitment to building an illiberal Christian democracy in 2018, at an event commemorating the legacy of the late Chancellor of Germany Helmut Kohl: ‘[u]nlike liberal politics, Christian politics is able to protect people, our nations, families, our culture rooted in Christianity, and equality between men and women: in other words, our European way of life.’ Since then, Hungary has been closely involved in the global Christian nationalist revival by convening high-level international summits and conferences on demography (to prevent the withering of Christian nations), and being active at the Conservative Political Action Conference internationally and launching it in Hungary—as a fully taxpayer-funded event—via the Center for Fundamental Rights. The intellectual foundations of illiberal Christian democracy are being developed at institutions such as the Mathias Corvinus Collegium and the Danube Institute, which brought prominent American Christian conservative intellectuals to Budapest. 

By giving children’s rights precedence over fundamental freedoms, the 15th Amendment creates a constitutional foundation for [...] banning the Pride march.

Advancing the ideals of illiberal Christian democracy, in late February 2025, in his State of the Nation address, Orbán said, ‘I advise the Pride organizers that they should not bother preparing for this year’s parade’. On 17 March, a bill was tabled in Parliament introducing a ban on assemblies  that ‘promote or display any deviation from a person's gender at birth, as well as gender reassignment and homosexuality’. The law was passed, signed, and published in the Official Journal on 18 March, a few months before Hungary’s LGBTQ+ Pride March 30th anniversary. By giving children’s rights precedence over fundamental freedoms, the 15th Amendment creates a constitutional foundation for the amendments to the assembly law banning the Pride march. The only reminder of pre-post-liberal times is the sobering note that, irrespective of how they are imposed, bans on LGBTQ+ Pride marches run counter to European human rights standards and obligations.

The constitutional definition of sex as exclusively male or female follows the same pattern, creating a constitutional foundation for the prohibition on legal gender recognition introduced in 2020, which prevents transgender persons from correcting their identity documents. By the time the 15th Amendment was tabled, the ECtHR and the Court of Justice of the European Union had already found the 2020 prohibition to be in violation of European standards. While the 15th Amendment may be a faithful representation of Orbán’s words and will, it does not affect Hungary’s obligation to execute these judgments.

Admittedly, the Fundamental Law, with its National Avowal (preamble), has already espoused Christian values. The adoption of the 15th Amendment turned Orbán’s words into constitutional text, with the performative assistance of the government’s parliamentary super-majority. In doing so, raw political power was released from the mere pretence of constitutional and democratic constraints, demonstrating the workings of illiberal Christian democracy in practice. In this perspective, European standards and international obligations belong in an alternative reality, soon to be displaced by the constitutional imagination of a new global order.

Renáta Uitz is professor of comparative constitutional law at Central European University in Vienna and a senior research fellow of CEU’s Democracy Institute in Budapest. 

Research for this work was conducted as part of the Towards Illiberal Constitutionalism in East-Central Europe project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.

Suggested citation: Renáta Uitz, ‘The 15th Amendment of the Hungarian Fundamental Law: Advancing Illiberal Christian Democracy’, ConstitutionNet, International IDEA, 2 May 2025, https://constitutionnet.org/news/voices/15th-amendment-hungarian-fundamental-law-advancing-illiberal-christian-democracy

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