Budapest (AFP) – Hungarian police said Friday that they would not ban next month's Pride parade in Budapest, a reversal from last year when the event was barred under the former nationalist prime minister Viktor Orban.
Prime Minister Peter Magyar, a pro-EU conservative who ousted Orban from office after 16 years in April elections, has regularly voiced support for equality and freedom of assembly.
But he has not specifically endorsed the Pride parada, nor moved to reverse a slew of laws passed under Orban that have restricted LGBTQI+ rights.
Pride organisers made a formal notification Wednesday about their intention to hold this year's march on 27 June 27.
"During the notification process for the 2026 Pride parade and the subsequent in-person consultation with the organisers, no grounds for prohibiting the assembly arose," police told AFP in a statement.
The statement also said police had issued "prescriptive-restrictive decisions regarding three counter-demonstrations", allowing the gatherings but distancing them from the Pride parade.
Last year's Pride march attracted a record turnout of more than 200,000 people, according to organisers, despite the official ban.
The turnout was seen as a strong rebuke of Orban's years-long clampdown on LGBTQ rights in the name of "child protection".
Last month, the EU's top court found that 2021 legislation – which was amended last year to serve as a basis for banning Pride – was in breach of the bloc's rules.
Participants could have faced fines up to €500 for attending the Pride parade, but police did not take action against them.
But Budapest's progressive mayor Gergely Karacsony, who stepped in to co-organise the event in an effort to sidestep the regulations was charged with organising the banned parade, with prosecutors seeking to fine him.
The activist who organised the only Pride march in Hungary outside the capital, Geza Buzas-Habel, also faces a fine for holding that parade last year.
