President of Hungary (2005–2010)
In view of the 2005 Hungarian presidential election, in February 2005, 110 personalities sent, as representatives of the Védegylet organization, intellectuals and artists, an open letter to the members of the National Assembly, to elect Sólyom as the next president of the Republic, as they saw in him a "non-partisan person who looks beyond the political considerations of the moment".
In the third round of the elections, on 7 June 2005, Solyom was elected by the National Assembly as the new President of Hungary, receiving 185 votes, three votes more than the Hungarian Socialist Party candidate Katalin Szili, although there were reports of voting irregularities. He was subsequently sworn into office.
László Sólyom was inaugurated in his office at a ceremony in the Mirror Hall of Sándor Palace on 4 August, effectively beginning his term of office on 5 August.
In March 2006 he refused to shake hands with János Fekete, former vice president of the Hungarian National Bank before the end of Communism in Hungary. The incident happened while presenting an award to Fekete that the Gyurcsány cabinet forced through, despite strong objections to that nomination due to Fekete's past as a hardline communist.
On 26 June 2006, while the President of the United States George W. Bush was visiting Hungary to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, Sólyom told him that "this fight against terrorism can be successful only if every step and measure taken are in line with international law", a comment that many media interpreted as a subtle criticism of the Iraq War.
Following the outbreak of anti-government protests in September 2006 that soon became violent, Sólyom called unsuccessfully on Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány to resign, accusing him of lying to the people and provoking a "moral crisis" in the country after the latter admitted that he had repeatedly lied about the country's economic situation. In 2006, a published poll showed that Sólyom was the most trusted politician in the country.
In 2007, he refused to award a similar distinction to Gyula Horn. He referred to the fact that Horn had not changed his views on the 1956 revolution in which he had taken part on the Soviet side, fighting against the Hungarian revolutionaries. Sólyom said that this (i.e., Horn's opinion) conflicts with the constitutional values of the Republic of Hungary, and that he could not give the award to Horn, despite his merits.
In 2009, Sólyom was refused entry to Slovakia to attend the dedication of a statue of King Saint Stephen in the border town of Komárno on 21 August, an incident reported in Hungary as tantamount to a declaration of persona non grata which further worsened already tense Hungary–Slovakia relations. Sólyom said that "this is a situation unheard of, inexcusable and unexplainable in the relationship of two allied countries." Slovakia's government, containing the ultranationalist SNS party, claimed that the Hungarian President's presence is a "threat to national security". Sólyom came back to visit the same statue a year later in August 2010, after Slovak voters ousted the previous government; the ceremony at the statue took place without incident. The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in October 2012 that the prohibition on his entry into Slovakia in 2009 did not compromise his freedom of movement as an EU citizen because his role as a Head of State justified a limit, based on international law, to his right to freedom of movement.
On 5 August 2010, Sólyom was succeeded as president by Pál Schmitt.
