BUDAPEST: EU's top court ruled Tuesday that anti-LGBTQ legislation Hungary enacted in 2021 breached the bloc's rules, including an article which sets out the fundamental values on which the EU is founded.
The European Commission, 16 of 27 member states and the European Parliament took Hungary to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over the law, in what has been billed as the largest human rights case in the bloc's history
Originally aimed at toughening punishments for child abuse, the law was amended by nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban's ruling coalition to ban the "promotion of homosexuality" to under-18s.
It outraged activists and leaders across the EU who criticised it for stigmatising LGBTQ people and equating same-sex relations to paedophilia.
The ECJ found that Hungary has acted in breach of EU law "on a number of separate levels".
The court found for the first time that the Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union (TEU) was infringed, including the rights of transgender and non-heterosexual individuals, "as well as the values of respect for human dignity, equality and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities"
The "law is contrary to the very identity of the Union as a common legal order in a society in which pluralism prevails", the ECJ said in a statement.
"Hungary cannot validly rely on its national identity as justification for adopting a law which is in breach of the values referred to above" it added.
Hungarian human rights groups welcomed the ruling as "historic".
It "confirms that the Orban government's policy of exclusion and stigmatization has no place in the EU" the joint statement signed by four prominent NGOs, including Amnesty International Hungary read.
They also commended the ECJ for taking a "significant step toward becoming not only the guardian of the economic union but also of our shared fundamental values".
It would be up to Hungary's new parliament set to take oath in early May to repeal the law, which also served as a basis for the police banning Pride marches last year.
Incoming Prime Minister Peter Magyar, a pro-EU conservative, who ousted Orban after 16 years in the elections over a week ago, regularly said he supports equality, but long avoided taking a clear stance on LGBTQ rights.
But in his victory speech he said Hungary has decided it wants to be a country, where "no one is stigmatised for loving differently or in a different way than the majority."