Justice Minister Judit Varga said Hungary will make no compromise over child protection and wants to have the most stringent child protection regime in Europe.
Minister Varga said that though the European Commission cited the Hungarian child protection law’s incompatibility with European audiovisual rules and regulations on the freedom of services as the reason for its criticisms of the law, the body’s “attacks” were actually directed against the values of Hungary’s constitution. The minister said she addressed a conference on the child protection law and the rule of law organised by Mathias Corvinus Collegium, the Foundation for a Civic Hungary and the German-Hungarian Institute for European Cooperation in Brussels on Monday. She said the EC was attacking a law that protected children’s right to their sexual identity at birth and stipulated that the mother is a woman and the father a man.
Minister Varga said it was regrettable that leading European politicians had formed an opinion on the child protection law before engaging in meaningful dialogue on the matter with Hungary’s authorities. She said the forces that embraced “woke ideology” had managed to convince 15 EU member states to join an ongoing lawsuit against Hungary over the child protection law. Though these 15 countries have joined the lawsuit, what matters in a case like this is the correct interpretation of EU law, such as the separation of national and EU competencies, Minister Varga said. Hungary has solid legal arguments based on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and the child protection law also received the backing of 3.7 million Hungarians in a referendum last April, the minister said. It is on this basis that the government will submit further proposals to parliament in the autumn to make Hungary’s rules the most stringent in Europe, she said.