After 16 years in power, Viktor Orban has been handed something that neither the opposition nor Brussels managed to impose on him for years - a constitutional barrier to returning to office. Hungary's parliament passed an amendment limiting prime ministers to a maximum of eight years in office, effectively shutting the door on an Orban comeback.

Behind the move stands the man who toppled him - current prime minister Peter Magyar, who beat Orban in the April elections and secured a two-thirds majority in parliament. It is precisely that supermajority that now lets him rewrite laws and the constitution that Fidesz, Orban's party, had enacted. The amendment states that no one who has previously served as prime minister for at least eight years may be re-elected to the post, and it applies retroactively - to all terms since 2 May 1990.

The change also paves the way to abolish the Sovereignty Protection Office, one of the most controversial bodies created under Orban, and returns part of the state's rights over the foundations that manage public assets. In other words, Magyar hasn't just taken power - he is methodically dismantling the tools his predecessor held it with.

The Balkans read stories like this with particular attention, because they rarely live through them. Here, „strongmen" tend not to leave with the constitution; they get swapped for new „strongmen." Hungary shows a model in which one leader, after 16 years, still exits through the electoral door, while the successor immediately builds a wall behind him. The question is whether such a barrier is a safeguard for democracy - or just the same instrument in different hands, tailored now against yesterday's master.