Unprecedented ruling finds Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ laws in breach of EU values

Submission statement: The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has issued a landmark ruling today finding that Hungary breached article 2 of the fundamental Treaty on European Union by adopting in 2021 a law banning the "promotion of homosexuality" to minors.

The law was sponsored by nationalist PM Viktor Orban and passed through the Hungarian Parliament, where his party Fidesz held a two-third majority, in 2021 as part of a broader offensive on personal freedoms and civil society. Under Viktor Orban's premiership, Hungary adopted some of the most restrictive anti-LGBT+ legislation in the Union, restricting gender change and self-identification, constitutionalizing bans on LGBT+ gatherings – aimed at the Budapest Pride Parade – and a ban on same-sex marriage. Orban's rhetoric routinely assimilated LGBT+ people to pedophile criminals, justifying his crackdown on gender and sexual minorities in the name of child protection.

The ECJ found on Tuesday, April 21, that the 2021 law was "contrary to the very identity of the Union as a common legal order in a society in which pluralism prevails" and breached a number of fundamental legal protections and values of the European Union, in the court's first decision to condemn a member state over human rights violations.

The decision was welcomed by NGOs and civil society representatives, as well as by the European Commission and other member states of the EU, 16 of which joined the case against Hungary.

The ruling was issued nine days after the victory of the opposition leader Peter Magyar, who is due to take office in early May as the head of a supermajority in the Hungarian Parliament. While Magyar is a conservative and has largely stayed out of debates about LGBT+ issues, he vowed to take back EU funds withheld by the Union due to Hungary's breaches of human rights and the rule of law, and said in his victory speech on April 12 that he envisioned a country where "no one is stigmatized for loving differently or in a different way than the majority."