Brussels – The fateful date of the Budapest Pride is approaching, and everyone is watching to see what moves the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, will make. Over the past few months, bipartisan pressure has grown against the authoritarian Hungarian leader’s decision to prohibit the pro-LGBTQ+ event, which traditionally attracts tens of thousands of participants. This time, politicians from all over the EU, including Italy, will also parade. There are fears of infiltration by extremist fringe groups and clashes with the police.
It has been a very busy week in the Old Continent. And it’s not over yet. After Monday’s Foreign Affairs Council (while war still open between Israel and Iran), Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s historic NATO summit in The Hague and yesterday’s EU summit (from whose conclusions, by the way, Hungary continues to withdraw at will), the attention will be all on Budapest tomorrow (28 June), for what is undoubtedly the hottest Pride ever.
The saga of the rainbow march in the Magyar capital, the latest step in Prime Minister Viktor Orbán‘s eternal crusade against the Lgbtq+ community and what he calls ‘gay propaganda‘,
started last March., when the National Assembly passed an ad hoc measure effectively banning the parade, the most attended initiative of its kind in the central European country.
This rule, which echoed a contested 2021 law on the protection of minors—whose compatibility with fundamental rights and EU norms,
already questioned by Advocate General Tamara Ćapeta, is being examined by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU)—was then reinforced in April via a constitutional amendment which, among other things, codifies the ban on organising events potentially ‘harmful’ to minors. It also authorises law enforcement to use biometric identification systems such as facial recognition to detect and fine participants at these prohibited gatherings.
There has been no shortage of interventions by EU institutions and human rights defenders. About ten days ago, Justice Commissioner Michael McGrath reiterated the Berlaymont’s opposition to the crackdown on civil rights and fundamental freedoms, warning that the EU executive is not afraid to use its legal arsenal.
In recent days, the Council of Europe (CoE) has also become involved, and, last but not least, Ursula von der Leyen herself, who had remained silent on the whole affair for a long time. In a video message posted on X, the Commission President called on the Hungarian authorities to “allow Budapest Pride to take place” without organisers and participants having to fear “criminal or administrative sanctions.”
I call on the Hungarian authorities to allow the Budapest Pride to go ahead.
Without fear of any criminal or administrative sanctions against the organisers or participants.
To the LGBTIQ+ community in Hungary and beyond:
I will always be your ally. pic.twitter.com/Wz0GBFRz8C
– Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) June 25, 2025
The move upset Orbán, who responded by branding von der Leyen’s call as undue interference in the government’s internal affairs and reiterated that anyone participating in the demonstration would do so in the knowledge that they were in violation of Hungarian law and woulwould do so in the knowledge that they violated Hungarian law and would therefore be held accountable. But he also called on the national security apparatus to refrain from using violence to counter the parade, as the eyes of the whole of Europe will be on Budapest.
There, as early as this afternoon, political and institutional figures of every order, rank, and origin are gathering: from delegations of European and national parliamentarians to ministers of the Twenty-Seven, passing through members of the European Economic and Social Committee and the European Commission. There will be, among others, the Equality Commissioner Hadja Lahbib, some group leaders from the Strasbourg Chamber (the socialist Iratxe García Pérez, the liberal Valérie Hayer and the ecologist Terry Reintke) and also several leaders of the domestic political scene, such as Elly Schlein (PD) and Carlo Calenda (Azione).
For MEP Carolina Morace (M5S), “there can be no compromises with those who openly repress the most basic freedoms.” “Those who deny fundamental rights enshrined in the Treaties,” such as freedom of assembly, equality and dignity, she says, “would be put at the door of the EU.” There will, however, be no members of Tisza, the party of Péter Magyar (part of the European People’s Party), which aims to dethrone Orbán in next spring’s elections.
Promoters and supporters of the event insist on its peaceful nature, but tensions cannot be ruled out with the participants of another manifestation, of the extreme right (organised by the Youth Association Hvim), authorised by the police on the same route as the Pride, which technically did not receive the green light from the police. The mayor of the capital, Gergely Karácsony, offered the pro-LGBTQ+ event the city’s patronage to circumvent the ban imposed by the new national regulations—still, the legal contours of the issue remain unclear.
It is clear, however, that Orbán, who proudly proclaims himself the standard-bearer of a new concept of a “liberal state“, has been taking the entire scaffolding of Hungarian democracy by storm for the past fifteen years, starting with fundamental guarantees. What worries Brussels most is the Hungarian version of the infamous ‘foreign agents’ law, modelled on a similar measure in force since 2012 in Vladimir Putin‘s Russia to silence dissent.
Not without a certain irony, among other reasons underlying the freezing of Georgia’s path to membership of the twelve-star club is also such a rule. The fact that it is possible for a member country of the EU to dismantle the rule of law with impunity—against Hungary a procedure ex Article 7 of the Treaty, which is supposed to sanction precisely these kinds of violations, has been open since 2018, and has since remained stranded at the Council table – says a lot about the capacity of Brussels to safeguard the principles and values on which the entire EU project would be anchored, as well as about the political will of the chancelleries.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
