Fidesz nominates Tamás Sulyok, President of the Constitutional Court, as President of the Republic

"The governing parties have accepted the proposal made by the President of Fidesz, in accordance with the statutes, and we propose Dr. Tamás Sulyok, President of the Constitutional Court, as President of the Republic.

We believe that the President of the Constitutional Court is the most suitable candidate for this office, and therefore we have put our trust in him,

Máté Kocsis said, according to MTI.

The leader of the Fidesz parliamentary group said that the Parliament will decide next Monday whether to accept the resignation of the head of state, and the governing party parliamentary groups will support this with their votes.

He added that it would be right for Parliament to elect the new President of the Republic as soon as possible, but he could not say when this would happen, as it would depend on whether the opposition parties nominate a candidate for the head of state. Gergely Gulyás, Minister of the Prime Minister's Office, predicted at last week's government press briefing that the opposition will not support the new presidential candidate, so there will be no consensus candidate supported by the whole Parliament.

Máté Kocsis also announced that the Fidesz presidium will propose Tamás Deutsch as the leader of the Fidesz-KDNP EP list.

The smaller party of the governing coalition, the Christian Democratic People's Party (KDNP) unanimously supports the nomination of Tamás Sulyok, President of the Constitutional Court, for the office of President of the Republic, said István Simicskó, leader of the KDNP parliamentary group, in Balatonalmádi on Thursday. He also said that, like the Fidesz faction, the KDNP group will support Sweden's NATO membership in Monday's vote. According to his assessment, the military relations and military-industrial cooperation established in the past provide a good basis for working together in NATO. He welcomed the Swedish Prime Minister's visit to Hungary on Friday, noting that very important discussions are expected at the meeting.

The new head of state must be elected within 30 days of the end of the previous president's term of office.

Tamás Sulyok is not the first to go from President of the Constitutional Court to President of the Republic. This happened in 2005, when László Sólyom, who headed the Constitutional Court from 1990 to 1998, was elected president with the support of the incumbent governing parties.

Tamás Sulyok's background

The current President of the Constitutional Court was born in 1956, and graduated from the Faculty of Law and Political Science of Attila József University (JATE) in Szeged in 1980.

From 1982 to 1991 he was a legal adviser, and from 1991 until his election as a constitutional judge he was a lawyer. From 2000 to 2014 he was Honorary Consul to Austria. Since September 2005, he has been an invited lecturer in constitutional law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Szeged, Hungary. He obtained his PhD in 2013, his research topic is the constitutional status of the legal profession, according to his biography on the Constitutional Court website. According to Wikipedia, his research also focuses on the relationship between the European Community's internal market rules and the services of lawyers.

He was elected by Parliament as a member of the Constitutional Court in September 2014. From 1 April 2015, he was elected Deputy President of the Constitutional Court. From 22 April 2016, he exercised the powers of the President as Deputy President, and on 22 November 2016, Parliament elected him President of the Constitutional Court.

He was last interviewed on Inforadio' Aréna programme last October. "At the current stage of development of the European Union, there is no clear solution to the so-called conflict situations. There is no hierarchy either between legal systems or between judicial forums. So you cannot say that the European Court of Justice is a higher court than, say, the Dutch Supreme Court or the Hungarian Constitutional Court. So far, jurisprudence or practice has come up with one solution to conflict-of-law issues: dialogue, so that the judicial forums can decide conflict-of-law cases in dialogue with each other," Tamás Sulyok explained.

To the question, "What should we do about phenomena such as the recent ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union in relation to the Romanian Constitutional Court that EU law has precedence in application over national law, even over Constitutional Court decisions?" Tamás Sulyok replied, "The fact that EU law has precedence of application - so far, this thesis is correct and true. The question here is whether it also has precedence over all questions, that is to say all questions that can be derived from the constitutions, the constitutions of the member states, because if that is the case, then we are actually living in an empire and not in the European Union that is currently legally defined by the Treaties."

It's a very big problem that where a legal decision should be made, a political decision is made instead, or a political decision influences the law. Then the alarm bell has to be sounded,

he said, referring to the European Court of Justice cases. "It is precisely the national constitutional courts that are the legal limit, which can, and I think should, go against European law on constitutional issues, on issues that go to the heart of national constitutions, for example if the issue of identity is infringed by EU law, or if the powers of the member states are clearly overstepped by EU law. This is not only an option, it is an obligation for all national constitutional courts at the present level of the Treaties," he added.

Cover photo: MTI Photo/Tibor Illyés