EU leaders clash with Orban over LGBTI+ rights

EU leaders confronted Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban during an ill-tempered summit in Brussels, clashing over anti-LGBTI+ law that has sparked widespread condemnation and suggestions that Budapest should quit the union.

Tensions ran high as a host of leaders demanded that Orban’s ultra-conservative government repeal legislation that prohibits references to homosexuality or transgender issues in school material or media aimed at under-18s.

Brussels has said the bill equates homosexuality with paedophilia and violates EU fundamental values on equality and discrimination.

Xavier Bettel, Luxembourg’s prime minister and the only openly gay leader in the European Council, and Mark Rutte of the Netherlands led the charge against Orban during a summit showdown on Thursday night.

Rutte confronted the rightwing premier, asking why he wanted to remain part of the EU and suggested that Hungary trigger the Article 50 mechanism to quit the bloc unless it changed its approach, diplomats told the Financial Times.

Ahead of the summit, Rutte described Hungary’s premier as “shameful”, and said Orban had “no business” in the EU. Micheál Martin, Ireland’s Taoiseach, said the LGTBI+ bill was an example of “Hungarian authorities transgressing a fundamental value of the European Union”.

Tensions came to a head at the summit after years of simmering frustration with Orban’s Fidesz government, which has been accused of violating the rule of law at home, misusing EU taxpayer money and launching assaults on the rights of minorities and migrants.

Judit Varga, Hungary’s justice minister, called Rutte’s comments “no more than another episode from the political blackmailing series. Hungary doesn’t want to leave the EU. On the contrary, we want to save it from hypocrites”, she wrote on Twitter.

During the debate, diplomats said Orban had defended the legislation, arguing that it was designed to protect children and maintain matters of sexual orientation for parents, and not schools. He claimed the law was misunderstood by its critics and not aimed at the gay community, said diplomats. “I am being attacked from all sides,” Orban said, according to officials familiar with the discussion.

During the exchanges, Luxembourg’s Bettel gave a personal account of how he came out as gay and the difficulties that some members of his family had in accepting his sexuality.

He accused the Hungarian bill of fuelling suspicion and divisions in society. “I did not become gay because of something I saw on TV,” said Bettel, according to diplomats familiar with the discussion.

Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, asked what had become of Orban, who had once been considered a liberal in the years after Hungary’s independence from Soviet rule.

Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, who is attending her last EU summit before federal elections in September, said children who were in need of advice over their sexuality should be able to access support from the state, said diplomats.

Criticism of the bill was widespread from all member states, with the exception of Poland and Slovenia who supported Hungary’s position that parents should have the ultimate say on how children are educated.

Ahead of the summit, Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president, had promised to use all available tools against the bill, which Brussels says contravenes a number of EU laws, including the Charter of Fundamental Rights and EU audiovisual regulation.

It will open another legal front against Budapest at the European Court of Justice, where Hungary has already been reprimanded over laws restricting academic freedom and on accepting migrant quotas.