Constitutional Court Elects Pál Sonnevend President

The full session of Hungary’s Constitutional Court elected Pál Sonnevend as the court's president in a secret ballot on Monday.

Pál Sonnevend assumed his role immediately a upon his election. Parliament elected Pál Sonnevend as a member of the Constitutional Court on July 27, and his presidential term will last three years, the court said on its website.

In his application for the post, Pál Sonnevend identified restoring public confidence in constitutional adjudication, strengthening the court's internal cohesion and rebuilding ties with its European counterpart institutions as his key priorities.

A justice only since July 28, he now leads a 15-member body whose members are elected by parliament and whose president is chosen from among them.

In his application for the post, he named three priorities: restoring trust in constitutional adjudication, strengthening the court's internal cohesion and rebuilding its ties with Europe's sister institutions. In a statement at his pre-election hearing in July, he declared that he had accepted the nomination because he saw a chance to bring the Hungarian court back into the community of Europe's constitutional courts.

Pál Sonnevend, 54, brings to the post the profile of an internationally recognized scholar of constitutional and international law rather than that of a party jurist. He represented Hungary before the International Court of Justice in The Hague and has appeared before both the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union. He has sat on the OSCE Court of Conciliation and Arbitration since 2013.

His academic life has revolved around ELTE Budapest's law faculty, where he has taught since 1998, heading the Department of International and European Public Law until 2025, serving as dean from 2019 to 2025, and co-editing volumes with leading European scholars on re-establishing constitutional democracy in EU member states.