Prime Minister Orbán said the position of the European Parliament and the European Commission is clear: They want LGBTQ activists and organizations to be allowed into schools and kindergartens. Hungary does not want this, he said, adding that according to the EU Treaties, this is clearly a matter for Hungarians, a national competence, and “Brussels bureaucrats have no business here."
Earlier, EC president Ursula Von der Leyen said Hungary must amend its pedophile law that “violates LGBTQI rights” or face legal action from the European Commission. Addressing a European Parliament plenary debate on Wednesday, following a meeting of the European Council on June 24–25, the EC president said that the Hungarian law had been a top priority for the EU heads of state and government. Von der Leyen called the law discriminatory and “disgraceful,” adding that it was completely at odds with the EU’s core values.
In a speech to the assembly, Fidesz MEP Kinga Gál noted the EC had confirmed several times that protecting minorities against discrimination was the competence of member states rather than the EU. “Is the protection of minorities a national competence in some member states and not a national competence in others? Are some minorities to be protected by the EC while others not?” she asked. She said Hungary’s child protection law had come under a concerted attack in the EU, and yet the law was in line with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights that states parents have the right to educate their children based on their beliefs and that the child’s interests are supreme. “The analysis that the Hungarian law is problematic because it discriminates against children in terms of allowing them access to certain content is absurd,” she said. “More than anything, the law protects children, and if the EU does not see this, it is worrying,” Gál added.
György Hölvényi of Hungary’s co-ruling Christian Democratic People's Party (KDNP) defended Hungary’s child protection law, saying that parents had a right to raise their children according to their beliefs. Hungarian children cannot receive sex education without the full consent of their parents, he added. “We cannot assign the task of sex education to activists under any circumstances,” Hölvényi said.