Hungary’s parliament has undone the centrepiece of Viktor Orban’s culture war legislation. On Tuesday lawmakers voted 139 to 51 to strip the anti LGBTQ provisions out of the 2021 child protection law, the measure that banned the portrayal or promotion of homosexuality and gender diversity in content accessible to minors and linked those themes to paedophilia in the statute’s framing. Orban’s Fidesz party voted against the amendment; the governing Tisza party of Prime Minister Peter Magyar, in office since May, carried it on its two thirds majority.
The amended law keeps a child protection frame but changes its target. Instead of banning content by identity, it now protects under 18s from material that can seriously impair a child’s physical, intellectual, emotional or moral development, with pornography, sexual exploitation, grooming and age inappropriate sexual content as the named categories. Magyar framed the change as alignment with European law rather than a rights restoration as such, pointing to child protection rules that apply regardless of sexual orientation.
The legal pressure behind the vote came from Luxembourg. Earlier this year the Court of Justice of the European Union struck down the 2021 law, ruling it breached multiple EU laws and interfered with fundamental rights, and Hungarian police permitted Pride marches this year in the ruling’s wake. The repeal therefore closes the compliance gap on this file, even as the political argument continues: Fidesz called the amendment a concession to Brussels.
Rights groups welcomed the vote with explicit limits. The Hatter Society called the removal of the content restrictions an important step, while AFP based reporting notes what the bill did not touch: trans people still cannot obtain legal gender recognition, same sex couples still cannot adopt, and the assembly law used against Pride events was not amended. The repeal is best read as the new government’s first legislative break with the Orban era, significant because it used the same supermajority mechanics Orban built, and incomplete by its own supporters’ account. Status: amendment passed by parliament.