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Hungary’s parliament has voted to amend child protection laws, removing provisions that stigmatise gay and transgender people, in a move welcomed by LGBTQ and human rights groups. The BBC reported that activists also called for changes to other laws introduced under former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
The 2021 law, passed by Orbán’s Fidesz-led parliamentary majority, prohibited the “portrayal or promotion of homosexuality or transgenderism”. Its effects extended to areas including education and the right of assembly.
Since Orbán lost the April election, the government led by Péter Magyar’s Tisza party has sought to roll back parts of the previous administration’s legacy. Tisza now holds the same two-thirds majority that Fidesz previously commanded, and Tuesday’s amendments were included in a broader legislative package.
Minutes after the vote, Budapest said the European Union had agreed to release €4.2 billion in funds frozen during the final years of Fidesz rule. The European Commission said last month that Magyar’s government had addressed several rule-of-law breaches affecting the EU budget and urged EU leaders to unlock the funds and readmit Hungary to the Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe programmes.
“We are very happy that this got adopted,” Tamás Dombos of the civil rights group Háttér Association told the BBC, adding that campaigners had spent five years opposing the law. He said concerns about the bill submitted to parliament had largely been resolved.
Fidesz and its sister party, the Christian Democrats, voted against the amendments. “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.
While Orbán’s Fidesz presented gay and transgender people as a threat to public morals, Magyar’s government has moved to soften or remove restrictions without describing itself as a liberal administration committed to full equality.
Dombos said the community still faced “a closed door”, but that the government was listening. He called for the recognition of same-sex marriage, adoption rights for same-sex couples and the restoration of transgender people’s ability to change their names in official documents.
Magyar has approached the issue cautiously. “As prime minister, it’s my duty to represent all Hungarians, and we have sensitive issues, such as the situation of sexual minorities,” he said in an interview published on Saturday by Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat.
Child protection became a vulnerability for Orbán after public attention turned to his government’s support for pardoning the deputy head of a children’s home, who had been convicted of covering up his superior’s paedophile crimes. During his election campaign, Magyar presented Tisza as a champion of children in state care while avoiding detailed positions on gay and transgender rights, the BBC reported.
In June 2025, an estimated 250,000 people attended Budapest’s Gay Pride march despite Orbán’s pledge to supporters to prevent it. Police did not intervene despite an official ban, and proceedings against the city’s mayor and others over organising the event were later dropped. This year’s event took place without restrictions.
