In March of this year Hungary introduced a new law making it a criminal offence to organise or participate in Pride events, or any assembly ‘promoting homosexuality or gender change’. Gender study programmes were eliminated from universities as far back as 2018. 

It’s the only EU country to have banned such events and, more generally, has clamped down on LGBTQ+ expression under the pretext of protecting children, much the same as alleged war criminal, Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, for whom the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant in 2023. Hungary’s PM, Viktor Orban, is a close Putin ally, his state-run media regularly spouting Moscow’s propaganda.

Orban and the orange one are mates too and in the US several executive orders have been signed rolling back protections for LGBTQ+ rights, eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes across government and in the armed services. 

The defiant scene above of yesterday’s estimated 180,000 to 200,000 people flouting Hungary’s law, and having a great time doing it, presents a challenge for Orban, but also for everyone involved: organisers could face up to a year in prison and participants fines of €16–500. On the day before Orban had said that the authorities would use facial recognition cameras trained on the event to hunt them all down. 

A coalition of 20 European Union countries had already signed a statement a few days before denouncing the anti-LGBTQ+ laws, accusing Orbán of violating EU human rights law. Their full statement is here.

With Hungary regularly criticised for undermining independent oversight and dissent, to me, this surely begs a question. If the EU stands for the values of equality, non-discrimination, inclusion, human dignity, freedom and democracy for every citizen, how come it stands for this? How can Hungary remain in the EU with Orban’s flagrant disregard for the rules to which his country’s signed up? 

I’m no expert on any of this but it seems to be a slow-moving, high wire strategic balancing act between legal action, political pressure and realpolitik. And something I didn’t know until recently is that the EU can punish a member state by freezing funds, suspending voting rights and imposing fines, but it can’t kick a country out, ever. There’s literally no article or clause in its treaties that allows for a country to be forcibly removed, no matter how serious its violations. This seems absolutely bonkers to me but apparently it was by design in that the EU was created to encourage unity and reform from within, and that the power to expel countries risked political fragmentation. But there is hope.

Hungary’s being punished already with billions in funding frozen. In 2021, Poland was fined €1 million a day for refusing to dismantle a disciplinary chamber that violated judicial independence, pressure that it couldn’t survive that lead to compliance. 

Perhaps the greatest hope for Hungary’s LGBTQ+ community is that the EU has formally referred the country to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which is independent from national governments, operating a judicial institution, not a political one.

Just this month its Advocate General issued an opinion that Hungary has violated EU law, with a ruling from the CJEU expected later this year. Such judgements are binding on all member states, all then legally required to comply. If Hungary doesn’t this will likely lead to further infringement proceedings, and ultimately daily financial penalties, as happened in Poland.

In other words, although the EU can’t chuck a member out, a decision to part company being one that can only ever be made by a country, the rules that all are signed up to mean that if they can’t or don’t want to play by the rules, the cost of not doing can be so financially crippling that the only escape is to leave.

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In related news from across the pond, the USA’s ever angry Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced on Friday that the USNS Harvey Milk, a ship named after the gay rights activist, is to be renamed after a World War II sailor, a recipient of the Medal of Honor. The inherent hypocrisy of his act evidently lost on him, he said that he was “taking the politics out of ship naming.”

Harvey Milk, assassinated in 1978, had served in the US Navy during the Korean War. Although he obviously wasn’t referring to Hegseth’s claim, this quote from Milk is apt in demonstrating its hollow futility. You can scrub a name from a ship, tell universities what not to teach and shut down all manner of things, but some things just won’t die.

“Hope will never be silent”