The judiciary has found the law in breach of the bloc’s values just a week after Viktor Orban’s decisive electoral defeat
Hungary has violated EU principles when it adopted a law to ban children from accessing LGBTQ content, the bloc’s top court has ruled, ordering Budapest to revoke the legislation.
The EU Court of Justice announced the ruling on Tuesday, less than ten days after Viktor Orban suffered a decisive defeat during the general election to his longtime rival Peter Magyar.
The legislation in question, Hungary’s 2021 law restricting or banning the “promotion” of homosexuality and gender change in media accessible to children, was adopted in accordance with the EU’s own guidelines on protecting minors from harmful content. Budapest’s interpretation of those rules, however, angered Brussels, with the EU Commission ultimately taking the case to the bloc’s top court.
The Court of Justice said it found the law in violation of the very values the EU is purportedly built upon and is “in breach of the freedom to provide and receive services.” Apart from that, the law entails “restrictions on freedom” and discriminates “based on sex or sexual orientation,” stigmatizing and marginalizing people of “non-cisgender persons.”
“The Court emphasizes, in particular, the margin of assessment that the Member States have, in the absence of harmonizing rules at the EU level, when defining the content, including audiovisual content, which is likely to impair the physical, mental, or moral development of minors,” the judiciary said in a statement, warning that said “margin of assessment” must be exercised in line with the bloc’s Charter.
Budapest is now obliged to comply with the ruling and repel the law, the court said. Failure to comply may bring “further action seeking financial penalties,” it warned.
The court’s ruling is bound to become a major test for Magyar, who now must choose between his pro-EU commitments and the risk of angering Hungary’s conservatives. Magyar has campaigned on fixing ties with Brussels and unblocking more than €16 billion ($19 billion) in the bloc’s funding for Hungary, which ended up frozen under Orban over rule-of-law and corruption allegations.
