Legislative bullying of protesters - The ban on Pride in Hungary, 2025

Making the law and its content

Although the Prime Minister announced the banning of the Pride parade, neither the amendments to the Fundamental Law nor the bill[1] that aims to ban it were submitted by the government; they were submitted by MPs. By using this tactic, the government abused its obligation to publish draft bills for public consultation before submitting them to Parliament. While the amendments to the Fundamental Law are still pending, the bill that aims to ban the Pride parade was forced through the Hungarian Parliament in little over 24 hours. The bill was proposed on 17 March 2025, adopted on 18 March 2025, and promulgated that same day as Act III of 2025.[2]

The proposed Fifteenth Amendment to the Fundamental Law is intended to create a constitutional basis for restricting rights, in particular those of the LGBTQI community and those who support their equal rights, in the name of protecting children. The newly proposed wording of Article XVI (1) of the Fundamental Law stipulates that “[children’s right to the protection and care necessary for their proper physical, mental and moral development and to the identity corresponding to their sex at birth] prevails over any other fundamental rights, except the right to life.”

Act III of 2025 introduces the following rules.

1. The new Section 13/A of Act LV of 2018 on the Right of Assembly (hereinafter: the Assembly Act) prohibits holding an assembly that “violates the prohibition set forth in Section 6/A of Act XXXI of 1997 on the protection of children and guardianship administration (hereinafter: the Child Protection Act) or that displays a substantial element of the content prohibited under Section 6/A of the Child Protection Act.” Section 6/A of the Child Protection Act – as amended by the infamous anti-“LGBTQI Propaganda” Law – restricts access of minors to “content that is pornographic or that depicts sexuality as having a purpose in itself or that depicts or propagates divergence from self-identity corresponding to the sex at birth, sex change, or homosexuality.”[3] Section 13/A of the Assembly Act also prescribes that authorities shall prohibit holding an assembly if, on the basis of consulting the organizers, there are reasonable grounds to believe that they plan to hold such a prohibited assembly.

2. The amended Section 189 of Act II of 2012 on Petty Offenses, Petty Offense Procedure, and the Petty Offense Registration System (hereinafter: the Petty Offenses Act) makes it a petty offense to organize, hold and attend a prohibited assembly as outlined above. This petty offense is committed by anyone “who – as an assembly organizer or leader – organizes or holds an assembly prohibited by Section 13/A § (1) of the Assembly Act by abusing the Assembly Act, and who attends such an assembly based on a public invitation, and – despite having been expressly informed by the police at the place of the assembly about the prohibited nature of the assembly – participates in it.” Previously, Section 189 only covered people who participated in a demonstration that had been notified to the police and was explicitly banned by the police. The new petty offense is also punishable with a fine of HUF 6,500 to 200,000 (EUR 16 to 500), which must be collected as taxes in the case of non-payment, and converting this fine to community service or a custodial sentence is explicitly precluded.

3. The new law allows authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify unknown perpetrators of any petty offenses. Previously, the use of facial recognition technology (FRT) in petty offense proceedings was only permissible in the narrow group of petty offenses punishable with imprisonment (custodial sentence), and Section 189 of the Petty Offenses Act (abuse of the right of assembly) is not such an offense. The adopted changes widen the scope of using FRT to include any petty offenses.

These amendments violate freedom of assembly, the prohibition of discrimination, and the right to the protection of personal data.

Violation of the right to protest

Freedom of assembly, guaranteed in Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), is one of the foundations of a democratic society. The case-law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) unequivocally maintains that “pluralism, tolerance and broad-mindedness” are the cornerstones of a democratic society, and although individual interests may be subordinated at times, “democracy does not simply mean that the views of the majority must always prevail”.[4] A legislative ban on the promotion of homosexuality and non-traditional sexual relations was held by the ECtHR to “reinforce stigma and prejudice and encourage homophobia.”[5]

Invoking the protection of children’s rights for the restriction of assemblies organized to promote the rights of sexual and gender minorities in and of itself is insufficient justification under Article 11 of the ECHR. In the case of the serial ban of the Moscow Pride parade in 2006-2008, the ECtHR took a clear stance on this matter: “There is no scientific evidence or sociological data at the Court’s disposal suggesting that the mere mention of homosexuality, or open public debate about sexual minorities’ social status, would adversely affect children or ‘vulnerable adults’. On the contrary, it is only through fair and public debate that society may address such complex issues as the one raised in the present case. Such debate, backed up by academic research, would benefit social cohesion by ensuring that representatives of all views are heard, including the individuals concerned. It would also clarify some common points of confusion, such as whether a person may be educated or enticed into or out of homosexuality, or opt into or out of it voluntarily.”[6] The Grand Chamber of the ECtHR explicitly endorsed this position in terms of the restriction of children’s access to information about different sexual orientations and gender identities.[7]

The Child Protection Act provision referred to is under scrutiny by the Court of Justice of the European Union, as this very section is among those provisions that gave ground to the ongoing infringement procedure launched due to the adoption of the infamous Propaganda Act.[8] In the pending court case against Hungary, the European Commission argues, among other things, that this section breaches Article 2 TEU and Articles 1, 7, 11, and 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Section 6/A of the Child Protection Act and the newly introduced provisions of the Assembly Act are incompatible with the rule of law, particularly the principle of legality encompassing, among other things, the requirement of foreseeability, accessibility, and precision. Terms such as “depicts” and “propagates,” as well as “substantial element” are not defined, they are vague terms and therefore offer no indication to individuals as to the circumstances and conditions under which the authorities are entitled to ban an assembly. The overly broad nature of Section 13/A of the Assembly Act, therefore, undermines the requirement of foreseeability, may lead to unfettered discretion in its application, and provides insufficient protection against arbitrary use of power.

The changes introduced by Act III of 2025, especially when taken together, seek to deprive LGBTQI people, and those supporting their causes, of their freedom of assembly and to force LGBTQI people entirely out of the public eye by pointing to the “display” of homosexuality and transgender identity as forbidden “content” at demonstrations. Furthermore, the vague wording of the law allows the authorities to ban not just assemblies which “promote” homosexuality and gender diversity, but also any assembly for equal rights for LGBTQI persons and assemblies that “display” homosexuality or gender diversity in any way. Moreover, the law can be interpreted to allow authorities to disperse any assembly where homosexuality becomes visible in any way, either by accident (i.e., regardless of the organizer’s intention) or by provocation.

As to making it a petty offense to organize or attend such a prohibited assembly by circumventing the Assembly Act, the basis for liability for this petty offense is simply that the police declare a demonstration prohibited and the participant in the demonstration then stays on the premises. This offense is punishable by a fine of up to EUR 500, irrespective of the lack of any unlawful conduct violating the core meaning of the right of assembly.

Organizing an assembly that the authorities have banned was already constituted as a criminal offense (punishable by up to one year of imprisonment), and attending one has been a petty offense since 2018. Therefore, this newly-introduced, particular petty offense is one committed when a prohibited assembly is held without prior notification and hence, the police are in no position to ban it. In the future, the fine for this petty offense cannot be converted to community service or to a custodial sentence (like other petty offense fines), thereby eliminating the likelihood of civil disobedience from individuals who are unable or unwilling to pay the fine that can be as high as EUR 500.

The new law also widens the scope of the police’s power to disperse a notified assembly. According to the previous rules, the police must disperse an assembly if it is held at a place, route, time, or for a period other than the place, route, time, or period specified in the notification, as long as the assembly should have been prohibited in the first place. According to the new provisions, any deviation from the notification now empowers the police to disperse any notified assembly.

Moreover, the amendment has changed the notification rules: it reduced the earliest possible time for notifying the police about a planned assembly from three months to one month before the scheduled date. This also seems to be designed exclusively to affect the Budapest Pride March, which was supposed to be notified by 28 March 2025 at the earliest (before the entry into force of the new legislation). At the same time, promoting any assembly publicly before its notification and acceptance by the police constitutes a petty offense.

FRT, right to privacy, data protection

The new law, to assist in identifying persons suspected of having attended prohibited or banned protests, grants authorities access to facial recognition technology (FRT). The police may request facial image analysis from the Hungarian Institute for Forensic Sciences (HIFS) in any petty offense proceeding. The HIFS system checks the state databases (e.g., databases of ID documents or passports) and provides information about the identity of the person on the image provided by police. FRT serves to uniquely identify a natural person; therefore, the data processed in such cases qualifies as biometric and is thus sensitive data under Hungarian and EU law.[9] Additionally, attending an assembly such as Pride reveals political opinions or philosophical beliefs, which are also considered sensitive data.

The new legislation is disproportionate, as it covers all petty offenses, regardless of their gravity. It provides a blanket authorization for police to identify anyone’s face on the streets or in public spaces if the authority deems it necessary to prevent, deter, detect, and disrupt petty offenses and to bring offenders to justice. The legislation does not pursue a legitimate aim, and even if one accepts that the legislation is meant to protect children's rights, the measure infringing privacy (the use of FRT) is not suitable to achieve such an aim. There is nothing that suggests that children would be better protected if the police are allowed to use FRT on peaceful protestors. The use of FRT to identify unknown perpetrators of all petty offenses, irrespective of the gravity or type of the petty offense, restricts the right to the protection of personal data and thus violates EU law. 

Conclusion

The new law aims to intimidate the public. The more successful the deterrence, the fewer people who participate in the Pride March on 28 June, the more successful the police will be in tackling them. However, the point is that the more people who attend the Pride parade despite the ban and the fine, the less risk there will be, the safer the participants will be, the lower the chance will be that you will be prosecuted and end up paying fines, the less chance there will be that the police will use force and crowd control to disperse the demonstration, and the less likely it is that violent, homophobic counter-protesters will be able to cause any harm.