Hungarian constitutional and legislative reforms have been in the spotlight since Hungary’sadoption of a new Fundamental Law, which entered into force on the first day of2012. Europe’s two leading international organizations (the Council of Europe and theEuropean Union) already issued an opinion about it the year before its entry into force,and they continued to closely follow Hungarian constitutional developments duringensuing years. The new Fundamental Law was followed by a series of new ‘cardinallaws’ and many controversial reforms. This article presents and discusses the opinionsdelivered by the Venice Commission, the European Court of Human Rights, and theeu institutions on these reforms and the different types of arguments on which theyrelied. This article also aims to present the interaction between the Hungarian governmentand Europe’s two leading organizations concerning the new constitutional settingof Hungary, focusing on the legal arguments in each case.