Budapest mayor says he’s proud to face charges for leading Pride parade

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 went ahead despite a Pride ban imposed by Hungary’s right-wing nationalist government. 

“I went from being a proud suspect to a proud defendant,” the mayor, who did not respond to an interview request from CBC, said in a statement posted to his Facebook.

“Because it seems that this is the price to be paid in this country if we stand up ⁠for our own freedom and that of others.”

Parade was ‘an extraordinary experience’

Despite the ban, Organizers say hundreds of thousands of people participated in Budapest’s 2025 Pride parade, in protest of Hungary’s anti-2SLGBTQ+ laws.

Among them was Ireland’s Ciarán Cuffe, co-chair of the European Green Party, of which Karacsony is a member.

“There was an amazing feeling of empowerment to walk the streets of Budapest along with 200,000 other people in a city and in a country where there has been, certainly, a clamp down on the freedom of expression,” Cuffe told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. 

“It was an extraordinary experience.”

Karacsony was charged for organizing an unlawful assembly despite a prohibition order, the Budapest Chief Prosecutor’s Office said.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ruling party passed a law in March 2025 that banned Pride events and allowed authorities to use facial recognition tools to identify attendees.

Orban’s government says Pride violates children’s rights to moral and spiritual development. A constitutional amendment last year declared these rights took precedence over other fundamental protections including the right to peacefully assemble.

Karacson tried to get around the ban by registering the Pride march as ⁠a municipal event, which he argued did not require a permit.

Police, nevertheless, prohibited it, saying it fell under the child-protection law. 

Prosecutors said Karacsony defied the police order by “repeatedly published public calls to participate in the assembly, and then led the assembly.”

Karacsony did not deny the prosecution’s description of events.

“That is exactly what happened,” he wrote.

The prosecution recommended Karacsony face a fine without a trial. But the mayor says he wants to go to court.

“I will never accept, nor resign myself to, the idea that in my homeland it could be a crime to stand up for freedom,” he wrote.

“I will never tolerate this, and despite every threat and every punishment, 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 anti-democratic.

“I think what you saw marching in Budapest was not just those advocating for gay rights, we also saw those advocating for democracy,” he said.

He says his party stands behind Karacsony, who it 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 Slovakia Prime Minister Robert Fico as examples.

“We are very proud of the expression he has given to the people of his city,” Cuffe said.

Hungarians head to the polls on April 12.