EU top court finds Hungary's 2021 anti-LGBTI law breaches the Union's founding values

On 21 April 2026 the Court of Justice of the European Union, sitting as a full court of all 27 judges, ruled that Hungary's 2021 "child protection" statute breaches the founding values of the European Union. The judgment in Case C-769/22, European Commission v Hungary, is the first time the Court has found a member state in breach of Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union as a self standing ground, and the first time it has found a violation of Article 1 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which protects human dignity.

The measure at issue is Act LXXIX of 2021, adopted by the Hungarian parliament on 15 June 2021 under the title of tougher action against paedophile offenders and the amendment of certain laws to protect children. Alongside sentencing provisions, the Act amended media, advertising, education and child welfare legislation so as to prohibit or restrict content that portrays or promotes homosexuality, gender reassignment, or gender identities differing from sex assigned at birth, where that content is accessible to minors. Hungarian broadcasters and publishers responded by pulling films, series and books.

The Court held that packaging the restrictions inside a paedophilia statute was itself part of the harm. By legislating against depictions of same sex relationships and gender transition in the same instrument that toughened penalties for child sexual offenders, the Act associated LGBTI people with convicted offenders, stigmatised and marginalised them, and risked encouraging hostility towards them. That, the Court found, ran counter to respect for human dignity, equality and human rights, and amounted to the kind of manifest and particularly serious breach that can ground a finding under Article 2 on its own. The Court was careful to set that threshold: not every incompatibility with EU values will do.

Beyond Article 2, the judgment records breaches of Article 3(2) of the electronic commerce directive 2000/31, Articles 16 and 19 of the services directive 2006/123, Article 56 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and Articles 1, 7, 11 and 21 of the Charter, covering dignity, private life, freedom of expression and non discrimination. The Court accepted that states may shield minors from age inappropriate material, but held that this can be done without discriminating on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Hungary had argued that the law expressed its constitutional and national identity, protected by Article 4(2) of the Treaty on European Union. The Court rejected the defence, holding that national identity cannot be invoked to detach a member state from the values it accepted on accession. Writing for The Loop, the political science outlet of the European Consortium for Political Research, Koen Slootmaeckers of City St George's, University of London, called the decision an activist ruling and noted that it removes the child protection template that similar bills elsewhere in Europe have copied.

The case had a long path. The Commission sent a letter of formal notice in July 2021 and referred Hungary to the Court in July 2022. In April 2023 the European Parliament and 16 member states joined in support of the Commission, among them Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. No member state intervened on Hungary's side. The full court heard argument on 19 November 2024, and Advocate General Tamara Capeta delivered her opinion on 5 June 2025.

Lydia Gall of Human Rights Watch described the outcome as a landmark ruling making clear that the law has no place in the European Union and should be repealed. The organisation also urged the Commission to monitor compliance.

Compliance is where the judgment now sits. On 2 May 2026, in a letter of almost three pages to President Tamas Sulyok that was published on Facebook by the Fidesz politician Gergely Gulyas, the outgoing prime minister Viktor Orban wrote that his government would not implement the ruling, describing it as political rather than legal and incompatible with provisions of Hungary's Fundamental Law. The letter carried limited practical weight. Fidesz had lost the parliamentary election of 12 April 2026 to Peter Magyar's Tisza party, and Orban left office on 9 May 2026.

Judgments of the Court of Justice bind member states. If the Commission concludes that Hungary has still not complied, it may return to Luxembourg under Article 260 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and ask for lump sum and daily penalty payments. The cleaner route is repeal by the Hungarian parliament, which has not yet been recorded. Until the statute is off the books, a court has declared unlawful a law that remains in force.