Recently, the European Commission had welcomed Hungary’s efforts to better take into account its recommendations in the fight against corruption, while Budapest wishes to start receiving the aid (7.2 billion euros) to which it can claim under the European recovery plan of 750 billion euros. But on Friday July 15, the community executive went back on the offensive against the government of Viktor Orban and its breaches of the rule of law.
Brussels has indeed announced that it has seized the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) against Hungary regarding a law prohibiting the dissemination of content on homosexuality or gender reassignment to minors. This is a new step in the infringement procedure launched by the Commission a year ago, to the day, when it sent Budapest a letter of formal notice to Budapest about this text homophobic, adopted on June 15, 2021.
The case sparked an outcry during the European Council on June 24, during which several European heads of state and government questioned their Hungarian counterpart, Viktor Orban, about his “homophobic” law. “Accepting myself as gay was the hardest thing for me. Hearing that maybe it was because I watched something on TV when I was young is unacceptable. Like mixing pedophilia, pornography and homosexuality”, had declared in particular the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel. His Dutch counterpart, Mark Rutte, had urged Budapest to repeal the law, failing which, he said, Hungary had no “nothing more to do in the European Union”. “You were a liberal, Viktor. What happened ? »had for his part questioned Emmanuel Macron.
Anti-LGBT law
At the time, Ursula von der Leyen was preparing to go to Budapest, in order to officially give her agreement to the release of European funds within the framework of the recovery plan. Angela Merkel’s ex-minister had finally given up on his trip and postponed his decision. Finally, the Commission, shortly afterwards, judged the instruments for combating corruption in Hungary to be insufficient and asked Viktor Orban to remedy them if he wanted to receive this money, a situation which has not changed since.
Anti-LGBT law, the Commission explained on Friday, “violates the fundamental rights of individuals as well as the values of the European Union”. What is more, it contravenes the rules of the internal market, insofar as it prevents the free circulation of audiovisual media which would contain, for example, images of homosexual families and which could no longer be sold in Hungary.
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