Hungarian MPs scrap Orbán's anti-LGBTQ measures

The Hungarian parliament has voted to amend child protection laws, scrapping measures that stigmatise gay and transgender people. LGBTQ and human rights activists warmly welcomed the move, but called for changes to other Orbán-era laws.

The 2021 Child Protection Law, passed by the large Fidesz majority of then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, banned the "portrayal or promotion of homosexuality or transgenderism".

Since Orbán's April election defeat, the Tisza government of Péter Magyar has been working to dismantle the previous government's legacy.

Minutes after Tuesday's vote, Budapest said the EU had agreed to release €4.2bn (£3.5bn) of funds frozen in the last years of the Fidesz government.

The European Commission said last month that the Magyar government had addressed a number of "rule of law breaches affecting the EU budget", and urged EU leaders to unlock the funds and readmit Hungary to two key EU programmes - Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe.

Hungary's 2021 law had affected a wide range of other laws, including education and the right of assembly.

Magyar's Tisza party commands the same two-thirds majority that Orbán's party used to have, and the measures passed on Tuesday were bundled together by the new government in a package of laws designed to unravel the Fidesz legislation.

"We are very happy that this got adopted," Tamás Dombos of 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 image.

But while Fidesz under Viktor Orbán appealed to the conservative electorate by identifying gay and transgender people as a threat to public morals, Tisza under Prime Minister Péter Magyar is trying to remove or soften legislation, without actually identifying as a liberal-minded government in favour of full equality.

In June 2025, the Gay Pride march through Budapest drew an estimated quarter of a million people, despite a promise by then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to his supporters that he would prevent it happening.

Police stood aside despite an official ban, and proceedings against the city mayor and others for organising the festival were later dropped. This year's event went ahead without restrictions.

The child protection issue turned from being a strong card in Orbán's hand to become his Achilles heel, when the public found out that his government had supported the pardon of the deputy head of a children's home who had been found guilty of covering up the paedophile crimes of his boss.

In his own election campaign, Péter Magyar presented his party as a champion of the rights of children in state care, while painstakingly avoiding the issues of gay and transgender rights, for fear of alienating 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."

This marked a major improvement on the Orbán years, he said, where his community felt constantly targeted. Other issues he wanted addressed include the full recognition of same-sex marriage, same-sex couples' rights to adopt children, and the restoration of the right of transgender people 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.