Search Articles
(CN) — Hungarian prosecutors on Wednesday indicted the progressive mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karácsony, for his role in organizing a gay pride march last June in defiance of a ban imposed by far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government.
Prosecutors said they would seek to fine Karácsony an unspecified amount for “organizing and leading” the LGBTQ+ Pride event on June 28, 2025, but stopped short of seeking to jail the mayor. He had faced up to a year in prison.
A few months before the popular Budapest Pride was to take place, Hungary’s Parliament amended a controversial 2021 child protection law and made it a crime to attend or hold events where content about homosexuality could be shared with minors. The law aimed to ban pride marches in the capital and elsewhere across the country. At the time, Orbán called the Budapest march “repulsive and shameful.”
Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws, which have even led to campaigns and fines against booksellers and authors, have been widely denounced as homophobic and illegal under European Union human rights law. In 2022, the European Commission sued Hungary over its anti-gay crackdown, and the EU’s top court is moving toward throwing out Hungary’s child protection law.
Last June, Karácsony, a leading voice against the authoritarian regime of Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party, dismissed the police order banning the march, arguing the event could not be prohibited because the city council was organizing it.
On Wednesday, prosecutors accused Karácsony of illegally promoting and leading the event, which started outside Budapest City Hall and drew more than 100,000 participants, including several politicians from outside Hungary.
On social media, Karácsony remained defiant and said he would not be “intimidated or silenced.”
“I will never accept that standing up for freedom, free speech or love can be treated as a crime,” he wrote Wednesday. “Despite threats or punishment, I will continue to fight. Freedom and love cannot be banned.”
He blasted prosecutors for “seeking to fine me without a trial,” adding that he had “gone from a proud suspect to proud accused.”
The case against Karácsony comes at a highly consequential moment ahead of April parliamentary elections that are seen as a major test for Orbán and his party. Orbán is trailing in polls against Péter Magyar, a conservative former ally of Orbán’s who has turned against the prime minister, accusing him of running a corrupt government.
But Karácsony, a member of the center-left Dialogue party, is not close to Magyar and the prosecution against him is unlikely to become a major factor in the upcoming election, according to Gabriela Greilinger, an expert on Hungarian politics at the University of Georgia in the United States.
“I currently don’t see this politicized in the campaign, so I don’t think this is going to play too big a role here,” she said in an email.
She said Magyar’s campaign against Orbán is focused on anticorruption and bread-and-butter concerns rather than “ideologically divisive issues.”
She added Orbán has not highlighted Karácsony’s case in his campaign, though “that could change if the government thinks that it is politically advantageous to do so before the elections.”
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.
Follow @cainburdeauSubscribe to our free newsletters
Our weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.