“Hungary’s decline is terrible,” Szabolcs Annus, a nearly 35-year-old man with a full life of commitments and moving between three different cities in Hungary, the country he moved to in 2013 from Serbia, his parents’ home nation, explains bluntly. Annus lives in Eger where he works and studies Sociology in Budapest. With determination he fights in Szeged as a volunteer in the Partiscum association, committed to promoting the rights of the LGBTQIA+ community in Hungary. Not an easy task given that the setting is a state that, under the leadership of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has experienced an authoritarian drift.
The country located in the heart of Europe is now an “illiberal democracy” in which the space for opposition and dissent from government policies is increasingly narrow. Institutionally, the numbers suggest dominance, as as many as 2/3 of the seats in Parliament are occupied by members of Fidesz, Orban’s party. The work of ngos, journalists and independent media has long been hampered, described as destabilizing and part of the network of philanthropist George Soros, a victim of various far-right movements.
“Over the past few years, the attacks by the government and Fidesz have made us angry and disappointed. But now, my community and I have begun to be afraid of what might happen and what they might do to attack us even more,” Annus says as he adjusts his glasses, his expression thoughtful but at times smiling and hopeful.
Ilga Europe ranked the country 29th in 2024, assessing laws and policies that impact Lgbtqia+ rights. With a score of 32.53 percent, Hungary is colored orange and is twenty percentage points below the 50.61 percent collected by the European Union, considered the average among its 27 member states. “In recent months we have noticed as an association that more and more members of the community, who used to remain silent, have begun to make themselves heard, to go to demonstrations and express a willingness to participate in the Pride marches,” Annus recounts.
The Fidesz-backed proposal to ban Pride by law does not stop the 30-year-old’s will: “I will go, although i am sure i will be punished with a fine. The government has talked about using technology that can recognize and find us, but i don’t think Hungary has such sophisticated means to do that.” The threat that scared him the most goes back a few weeks and is related to his dual nationality: “As a Serbian and Hungarian citizen if I were accused of ruining Hungarian society and sovereignty because I participate in Pride, i might be forced to return to my home country.” It is just the latest piece in Orban’s battle.
A 2020 amendment to the Constitution recognizes only the traditional family, in which “the mother is a woman, the father is a man,” and as of 2018 gender studies are banned from universities because they are deemed “ideology,” lacking scientific foundation. The “protection of children” and their growth, starting from the school benches, is the reason cited by Orban and his associates to hinder the sale of books featuring rainbow families, to trample on the dignity of transgender people.
Annus is convinced, however, that civil society is more open than the current government, and that there are many people who support and try to help the Lgbtqia+ community even though they are not part of it. For the future he looks forward to the introduction of same-sex marriage and the possibility of adoption, two achievements possible only with the “destruction of what Orban has done.”
He eagerly awaits the spring 2026 elections in Hungary: “I want to see if people will open their eyes, what they will do after what is happening.” The polls do not herald a foregone reappointment for Orban. Polls place him ten percentage points below Tisza, a center-right party led by lawyer Peter Magyar, an Orban ally in the past. The run up to April next year is still long, and the prime minister’s control over the system is entrenched, but never before has his reign trembled.
