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As it happens7:03 a.m. European Green Party supports Budapest mayor accused of violating pride ban
Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony remains defiant after being criminally charged for his role in organizing his city’s Pride parade last summer, in defiance of Hungarian law.
Police have been investigating Karacsony since the June 28 march began, despite a ban on Pride imposed by Hungary’s right-wing nationalist government.
“I went from being a proud suspect to being a proud accused,” said the mayor, who did not respond to an interview request from CBC. in a statement posted on his Facebook.
“Because it seems like that’s the price we pay in this country if we defend our own freedom and the freedom of others.”
The parade was “an extraordinary experience”
Despite the ban, organizers say hundreds of thousands of people participated in the Budapest Pride parade in 2025, to protest against Hungarian anti-2SLGBTQ+ laws.
Among them was Irishman Ciarán Cuffe, co-president of the European Green Party, of which Karacsony is a member.
“It was an incredible feeling of empowerment to walk the streets of Budapest with 200,000 other people in a city and in a country where there has certainly been a crackdown on free speech,” Cuffe said. As it happens host Nil Köksal.
“It was an extraordinary experience.”
Karacsony was charged with organizing an illegal assembly despite a banning order, the Budapest Prosecutor General’s Office said.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ruling party passed a law in March 2025 banning Pride events and allowing authorities to use facial recognition tools to identify participants.
Orban’s government says Pride violates children’s rights to moral and spiritual development. Last year, a constitutional amendment declared that these rights took precedence over other fundamental protections, including the right to peacefully assemble.
Karacson attempted to circumvent the ban by registering the pride march as a municipal event, which he claimed did not require a permit.
The police nevertheless banned it, believing that it fell under the child protection law.
Prosecutors said Karacsony defied the police order by “repeatedly posting public calls to participate in the assembly and then leading the assembly.”
Karacsony did not deny the prosecution’s description of the events.
“This is exactly what happened,” he wrote.
The prosecution recommended that Karacsony be fined without trial. But the mayor says he wants to go to court.
“I will never accept, nor resign myself to, the idea that in my country, defending freedom could be a crime,” he wrote.
“I will never tolerate this, and despite all the threats and all the punishments, I will fight it, because when people who want to live, to love, to be happy are simply betrayed by their own country, betrayed by their government, resistance is a duty.”
Cuffe says laws that limit freedom of assembly and expression are inherently undemocratic.
“I think what you saw marching in Budapest was not just those advocating gay rights, we also saw those advocating democracy,” he said.
He says his party supports Karacsony, whom he sees as a bulwark in the fight against the rise of the far right in parts of Europe, citing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico as examples.
“We are very proud of the expressiabout what he gave to the people of his city,” Cuffe said.
Hungarians will go to the polls on April 12.
