Hungarian MPs scrap Orbán's anti-LGBTQ measures
LGBTQ and human rights activists warmly welcomed the move, but call for changes to other Orbán-era laws.
Hungarian MPs repeal Orbán’s anti-LGBTQ measures
This year’s Budapest Pride march took place without restrictions, one year after the Orbán government attempted to ban it
The Hungarian parliament has approved changes to child protection laws, removing provisions that stigmatise gay and transgender people. LGBTQ and human rights activists welcomed the decision, while also urging reform of other laws introduced under Orbán.
The 2021 Child Protection Law, passed by the large Fidesz majority of then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, prohibited the “portrayal or promotion of homosexuality or transgenderism”.
Since Orbán’s April election defeat, the Tisza government of Péter Magyar has been moving to dismantle the previous administration’s legacy.
Just minutes after Tuesday’s vote, Budapest said the EU had agreed to release €4.2bn (£3.5bn) in funds that had been frozen in the final years of the Fidesz government.
Last month, the European Commission said the Magyar government had dealt with several “rule of law breaches affecting the EU budget”, and called on EU leaders to unlock the money, external and restore Hungary to two major EU programmes - Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe.
Hungary’s 2021 law had influenced a broad range of other legislation, including education and the right of assembly.
Magyar’s Tisza party holds the same two-thirds majority that Orbán’s party once had, and Tuesday’s measures were grouped together by the new government in a package of laws intended to unwind Fidesz legislation.
“We are very happy that this got adopted,” Tamás Dombos of the civil rights group the Háttér Association told the BBC. “We’ve been fighting this so-called child protection law for five years. There have been problems with the bill submitted to parliament, but most of those problems have been fixed.”
Both the Fidesz and Tisza governments made child protection central to their public image.
But while Fidesz under Viktor Orbán courted conservative voters by portraying gay and transgender people as a danger to public morals, Tisza under Prime Minister Péter Magyar is seeking to remove or soften the laws without presenting itself as a liberal government committed to full equality.
In June 2025, the Gay Pride march in Budapest attracted an estimated quarter of a million people, despite a pledge by then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to his supporters that he would stop it from taking place.
Police did not intervene despite an official ban, and later proceedings against the city mayor and others over organising the festival were dropped. This year’s event went ahead without restrictions.
The child protection issue shifted from being one of Orbán’s strongest assets to becoming his Achilles heel, after the public learned that his government had backed the pardon of the deputy head of a children’s home who had been convicted of covering up the paedophile crimes of his boss.
During his own election campaign, Péter Magyar cast his party as a defender of the rights of children in state care, while carefully avoiding questions of gay and transgender rights for fear of driving away right-wing voters.
“We are still knocking on a closed door,” Dombos told the BBC, “but at least they are listening on the other side.”
He said this was a major improvement on the Orbán years, when his community felt constantly targeted. Other changes he wants include full recognition of same-sex marriage, the right of same-sex couples to adopt children, and the restoration of transgender people’s right to change their names in official documents.
“I’m very cautious,” Magyar said in an interview published in Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat on Saturday. “As prime minister, it’s my duty to represent all Hungarians, and we have sensitive issues, such as the situation of sexual minorities.”
Fidesz and its sister party, the Christian Democrats, voted against the new amendments to the law on Tuesday.
“There is no place for the promotion of LGBTQ content in schools or the media,” the Christian Democrats said in a statement on their website.