Béla Pokol

Béla Pokol was elected to the Constitutional Court in 2011 by Fidesz-KDNP's two-thirds parliamentary majority, after the governing party changed the nomination rules to bypass the need for cross-party consensus; among opposition parties, only Jobbik supported his candidacy in the vote, while the others rejected him and the other nominees as 'party-bound.' In June 2025, by then a retired justice, Pokol publicly proposed creating a 'Constitutional Defense Council' that could, ahead of a possible 2030 change of government, declare a 'constitutional defense situation' if a simple-majority government attempted an action normally requiring a two-thirds majority — a declaration that would suspend Parliament's operation and end the sitting government's mandate. Constitutional law scholars, including Richárd Szentpéteri Nagy, publicly called the proposal a 'constitutional coup,' while others called it 'absurd,' warning the mechanism could paralyze any future government. A lawyer for the Hungarian Association for Democratic Rule of Law dismissed it as 'completely unnecessary theorizing,' but critics said its real purpose was to cement the current, Fidesz-drafted Basic Law in place even against a future opposition election win.