Mayor will ‘come up with plan C' if police try to impose ban on Budapest Pride
Hungarian police said on Thursday they were banning the country's main Pride march from taking place in the capital, citing recent legislation passed by Viktor Orbán's government that prohibits the promotion of same-sex relationships to under-18s.
'The police, acting within their authority over public assemblies, prohibit the holding of the assembly at the aforementioned location and time,' the police said.
But Gergely Karácsony, the liberal mayor, said the gathering would go ahead regardless, saying the police decision had 'no value' because the march did not require official authorisation as it was a municipal event organised by the city council.
'Budapest city hall will organise the Budapest Pride march on 28 June as a city event. Period,' he wrote on Facebook.
The mayor, who was re-elected to the position last summer, is among the harshest critics of the rightwing government's politics. He has hung an LGBTQ+ and a Ukrainian flag on the administration building in central Budapest, in defiance of Orbán's Fidesz party's rhetoric.
In an interview with the Guardian this week, before the police statement, Karácsony said he was determined the event would go ahead. 'There is currently no law that could ban [a municipal event],' he said. 'Obviously, anything can happen in Hungary. But we will come up with a Plan C.'
Dozens of MEPs have said they will attend a Pride event in the city in defiance of the government, as well as politicians including the Spanish culture minister, Ernest Urtasun; Ireland's former taoiseach, Leo Varadkar; and the mayors of Amsterdam and Brussels.
Karácsony, who won a seat in the Hungarian parliament as a member of a new green party in 2010, the same year Orbán came to power, said he also expected the police to help guarantee the safety of the event. 'I believe that everyone can attend safely on 28 June,' he said.
Since Orbán returned to power, Hungary has passed a series of laws which have been criticised at home and across the EU for curtailing the rights of the country's sexual and gender minorities in the name of 'child protection'.
The bill passed in March by the Fidesz-majority parliament was only the latest but perhaps starkest example, seen by many as a direct attack on Budapest Pride, which has been held in the city for nearly three decades.
Karácsony, who was elected mayor of the capital in 2019 and was re-elected in 2024 by just a few hundred votes, insists his drive to ensure the march lives on is not about currying favour with voters. 'A good politician has a strong moral compass,' he said. 'But I know that most Budapest residents agree with me.'
At a time when the Hungarian LGBTQ+ community feels increasingly embattled, Karácsony has openly supported LGBTQ+ rights. He was among the speakers at Budapest Pride in 2021, after the government passed a law banning the 'display or promotion of homosexuality' to under-18s.
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The mayor's support of liberal views has earned him the ire of the increasingly authoritarian populist government, which has portrayed him variously as an agent for a previous socialist prime minister, for the US billionaire George Soros, the Biden administration and the EU.
Karácsony was one of the strongest candidates to stand against Orbán in the last general election in 2022. In the end, the six-party joint opposition chose another city mayor, Péter Márki-Zay, to run for PM. Fidesz retained a two-thirds majority in parliament, and Orbán was elected for a fourth consecutive term.
Karácsony told the Guardian he would not run in the 2026 general election, where Orbán is expected to face his strongest opponent to date, Péter Magyar. Magyar, a conservative politician, has not endorsed Pride, but spoken up for the right of people to assemble.
'We use power to encourage or support those who need it,' said Karácsony, a sociologist by trade.
Quite what will happen on 28 June is unclear. Orbán's chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, told a briefing on Wednesday that no matter what the mayor said, a Pride gathering would fall under the legislation that governs the right to assemble.
In their statement police said any appeal against the ban must be lodged with the Hungarian supreme court within three days. The march, they said, 'by its very nature cannot be held without the representation' of people belonging to the LGBTQ+ community and that under-18s could be present along the route.
'If it cannot be stated with absolute certainty that the display is not taking place in the presence of persons under 18 years of age, the assembly would be in breach of the ban,' the police said.
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