Fifteen of the 27 European Union countries have joined a lawsuit against Hungary’s controversial child protection law, widely criticized as discriminatory against the LGBT+ community. Last July, the European Commission decided to sue the Hungarian government in the Court of Justice of the European Union over the law, approved in June 2021 by the Hungarian government, according to which it is illegal in Hungary to address issues related to homosexuality and transsexuality in public contexts frequented by minors.
According to the European Commission, the Hungarian law is in conflict with various European laws as well as with “human dignity, freedom of expression and information, the right to respect for private life and the right to non-discrimination”.
The Commission has given EU member states a few months to decide whether to join the case against Hungary: Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria, Ireland, Denmark, Malta, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Slovenia, France, Germany and Greece, as well as the European Parliament. Italy and Poland, the two main European countries led by a conservative government, have decided not to join the cause.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said that “for us, the issue of child protection knows no compromises (…) regardless of how many countries decide to join the ongoing case against us”. The Hungarian government, led in a semi-authoritarian manner by Viktor Orbán since 2010, systematically opposes the LGBT+ community. Over the years Orbán, among other things, has amended the Constitution to establish that marriage can only exist between a man and a woman and to prevent officially single people (therefore also homosexual people) from adopting children.
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