Luca Dudits remembers the first LGBT+ pride march she attended in Budapest about eight years ago. After the demonstration ended, the crowd started to get trams back across the Hungarian capital city, when they were set upon by right-wing protesters.
“The police had to form a line in every single tram station because counter-protesters were there and trying to get on the tram, and throwing tomatoes and rotten stuff and stones. It was quite scary,” she says.
Last month an estimated 30,000 people marched in Budapest Pride, without the need for a police security cordon along the route. Dudits (26), who now works for Hatter, the oldest LGBT+ support organisation in Hungary, says attitudes to the community have improved in recent years. However, over the same period, life has become more difficult, due to repressive policies introduced by the country’s right-wing nationalist government.
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, who has been in power since 2010, has fundamentally reshaped Hungary in that time. Civil society organisations have been targeted, LGBT+ rights have been eroded, migration policy has been toughened, and media independence has been gutted.
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The government has banned trans people legally changing their gender, put restrictions on the sale of LGBT+ books and sex education in schools, as well as pushed rhetoric that the community poses a threat to children. “They are really trying to erase LGBTQI people from the public eye,” Dudits says.
Fejer Sari, a 22-year-old psychology student working in a cafe, says life in Hungary has pushed many of her peers to emigrate. “They get their degree here and then everyone goes,” she says.
Orban has also become an increasingly annoying stone in the shoe of the rest of the European Union. A transactional politician at his core, he has withheld support for decisions that require unanimity, as a means of winning concessions.
The Central European country of 9.6 million people has often found itself as the sole holdout of the 27 member states, blocking decisions such as releasing vital support to Ukraine in its war with Russia. Hungary is one of the most forceful supporters of Israel in its war with Hamas.
Several diplomats and EU officials involved in negotiations speak of a recurring difficulty when running up against opposition from Hungary. The challenge is trying to figure out if the reason given for blocking something is genuine, or if the veto is an attempt to leverage movement on something else.
Orban is said to be affable and keen to chat about subjects such as football on the sidelines of summits where the 27 EU leaders meet, according to several sources. However, he remains a marginalised and obstructive figure when it comes to decision-making. While Italian hard-right prime minister Giorgia Meloni has opted to gain influence by working with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, Orban has been an antagonist.
Andras Biro-Nagy, director of Policy Solutions, a progressive think-tank in Hungary, says Orban has long harboured ambitions to disrupt the balance of power in Europe, with a view to shifting it firmly to the right. “The goal of occupying Brussels, I wouldn’t say it is further [away] than ever, but it is certainly very far,” he says. “After so many conflicts with the European institutions and European leaders, he basically has no other option, in order to reach some results at a European level, than his constant threat of vetoes.”
Most controversially Orban held up €50 billion in financial support the rest of the EU leaders had agreed to provide to Ukraine, delaying its release by several months. He is currently blocking a further €6.6 billion, leading to some talk about changing the need for decisions on foreign policy to be unanimous, or other ways to work around Hungary’s veto.
At the start of this month Hungary took over the presidency of the Council of the EU, which rotates between countries every six months. The position, which holds influence over what makes it on to the agenda in Brussels, usually sees the holder act as a broker helping to move policy along.
A controversial trip to Russia to meet Vladimir Putin last week to discuss “peace” in Ukraine infuriated EU leaders and drew widespread condemnation. The visit, just days after Hungary took over the council presidency, was seen as Orban trying to politicise the role, which has no remit to negotiate for the EU on the world stage.
The Russia visit was followed on Monday by a trip to China, where Orban met President Xi Jinping. In a post on Facebook, he said ending the conflict in Ukraine “depends on the decision of three world powers, the United States, the European Union and China.”
Orban doesn’t underestimate the threat posed by Russia, according to one former national leader who has sat around the table with him. Billboards on motorways into Budapest encourage people to sign up for the army reserves, as part of a bid to bolster the military. Still, the Hungarian is seen as the most Kremlin-friendly of the EU leaders. His calls for peace in practice mean Ukraine should give up large tracts of territory taken by Russia since the 2022 invasion.
The near immediate breakdown in trust between Hungary and other EU leaders at the start of its council presidency could indicate a fractious six months. Several senior diplomats who spoke to The Irish Times previously expressed hope the disruption would be limited, given much of the EU’s focus in the coming months will centre around the next commission getting up and running after the European elections, rather than negotiations on legislation.
Outside of the Hungarian capital views are much more traditional, with rural areas seen as the electoral heartlands of Orban’s party, Fidesz. Funding is allocated to areas based on their political ties to the ruling party, according to Jozsef Peter Martin, executive director of Transparency International Hungary.
“Basically whether a village can develop or not it is decided on the loyalty. If you are loyal, then you get lots of government money from the state budget, from the EU sources. If you are not loyal then you cannot get these development funds,” he says. “Loyalty is a crucial word to describe the system, the whole regime,” he adds.
About €20 billion in EU funding set aside for Hungary is being withheld over concerns about the erosion of rights and undermining of the rule of law in the country.
Martin says while Fidesz will try to make changes to free this blocked funding, it is unlikely to go far enough. “They will always manoeuvre between some kind of compliance [with the rule of law] and keeping themselves in power, but if there is a strong contradiction between the two then they will always choose keeping the power,” he says.
In recent weeks the Hungarian branch of the anti-corruption organisation has been targeted by a law introduced to combat foreign influence, which Martin says is the latest example of the crackdown on civil society.
Hungarian minister for European affairs Janos Boka says the investigation is independent of the government. The minister rejects the claim that there had been any oppression of the LGBT+ community, saying Hungary’s treatment of the group does not “stand out” compared to the rest of the EU. The fact that thousands had marched in Budapest Pride last month suggested the community didn’t feel the need to “hide”, he says.
Campaign posters are still up on many lamp-posts in central Budapest, after European and local elections in early June. In what was seen as a bad result, the Fidesz vote share dropped to 44 per cent in the European Parliament elections. For the first time in years Orban faced a genuine challenger in Tisza, a party formed only months before, which won 29 per cent of votes.
The party was set up by Peter Magyar, a former Fidesz insider who broke away to launch an opposition movement railing against corruption in the system. Magyar, who is politically centre-right, hoovered up votes that traditionally would have gone to the divided liberal and left-wing parties, as well as peeling supporters from Fidesz.
“The major challenge for Tisza and Peter Magyar is to turn this one-man show into a proper political party,” says Biro-Nagy. The new opposition figure will have fixed his eyes on parliamentary elections due to be held in 2026. “The big question is what will happen if Peter Magyar keeps on rising... Then the race could be much more competitive than any time over the last 14 years,” he says.
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