The same threshold, running the other way
Hungary's parliament elected András Baka president on August 11 by 140 votes to 6, and all 51 Fidesz MPs walked out before the vote. It was the same party that removed Baka from the presidency of the Supreme Court in 2011. His job now is to oversee the drafting of a text to replace the constitution Orbán's majority adopted, also in 2011. Since early May, Péter Magyar's government has passed 27 laws and two constitutional amendments, cancelled the states of emergency that made rule by decree possible, abolished the Sovereignty Protection Office and restored the Constitutional Court's power to review acts of parliament.[1]
What stands out here is that the instrument has changed hands. A single party's two-thirds majority wrote the 2011 text; a two-thirds majority is dismantling it today. Durability depended as much on whose consent was required to change the text as on what the text said, and a threshold that never needed the losing side's agreement works just as fast in reverse once the majority turns over. Another explanation is available: April's result may have been large enough that no defect in the 2011 method need be sought. Yet the Fidesz walkout and the second constitutional amendment that followed it suggest the argument keeps returning to the same place, the threshold itself.[1]
Bern asks the same question a month early
In Switzerland, foreign minister Ignazio Cassis launched the Federal Council's campaign on Tuesday against an initiative that would define neutrality in the constitution; the vote is on September 27. The initiative would declare neutrality permanent and armed, close off cooperation with defence alliances except under direct attack, and bar sanctions on parties to a war unless the United Nations mandates them. The government's objection rests somewhere interesting: neutrality is already in the constitution, has been recognised since the Treaty of Paris in 1815 and is codified in the Hague Conventions. Cassis attributed 180 years of success to applying the principle wisely and responsibly.[2]
The question in both capitals is the same: does a political settlement become durable once it is carried into constitutional text? Budapest has now completed one such experiment, and it lasted fifteen years. Bern is being asked to take the same step, while its government argues for keeping the practice flexible. That is where the decisive difference in the comparison sits: the Swiss article would be adopted by voters at the ballot box rather than by a parliamentary majority, and support for neutrality itself runs at about 85 per cent in polls. An article the electorate approves directly does not become one majority's instrument the way Hungary's 2011 text did, which is why Budapest's experience can serve Bern as a warning without supplying a ready conclusion.[2], [1]
Where to look
Baka's own position hangs on the same question. Under the constitutional amendment that made his office possible, the new president will serve until the new constitution comes into force, or for five years at most; he was chosen for a transitional stretch. Before taking the post he told the BBC he opposed limiting MPs' terms, treating that as an intrusion on voters' right to choose their representatives freely, though the amendments imposing those limits are the work of the majority that elected him. Speaking in parliament he promised the broadest possible debate and said the state exists for the people rather than for itself.[1]
Two measurable steps are worth watching. If the drafting of the new constitution writes in a procedure requiring consent beyond the governing majority before the text takes force, Budapest will have learned from its own method; without such a procedure the text can be treated as valid until the next two-thirds majority arrives. The observable signal is whether Fidesz returns to the drafting process. The second comes on September 27: if Swiss voters agree to turn into a constitutional article the practice their government wants to keep flexible, we will have seen two answers to the same question inside one calendar.[1], [2]