Budapest mayor Gergely Karácsony has been formally charged by the V. and XIII. District prosecutor's office with violating the freedom of association and assembly, and the prosecutor's office has proposed a fine, its website reports.
Karácsony's interrogation related to the organizing of the 2025 Budapest Pride was conducted on August 1 and his complaint against the charges was rejected in mid-August.
The Hungarian parliament amended the constitution in the spring, placing children's right to healthy development above the right of assembly on the list of fundamental rights, and a prohibition of gatherings which violate the provisions of the anti-LGBTQ law known as the Child Protection Act was added to the law on public gatherings.
Mayor Gergely Karácsony eventually announced the Pride march as a municipal event, but the police interpreted it as a public gathering and banned it. At the end of June, Hungary's biggest Pride march ever was held in Budapest, with the crowd stretching from Madách Square in the city center, all the way to the embankment by the Technical University. Dozens of MEPs, mayors of major foreign cities, and ambassadors participated in the event.
The prosecutor's office writes: “The Budapest Police Headquarters, as the authority responsible for assemblies, prohibited the holding of the assembly in its decision of June 19, 2025, on the one hand in accordance with the amended Child Protection Act, and on the other hand because someone else had already registered a different type of event for the same date and location. The defendant became aware of the decision of the responsible authority on the day it was issued, did not seek legal remedy, did not exhaust all legal avenues, and then went ahead and organized the gathering despite the prohibitive decision becoming final.”
“I went from being a proud suspect to a proud defendant. 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,”
Gergely Karácsony wrote on his official Facebook page on Wednesday.
The mayor also noted that the prosecutor's office intends to impose a fine without a court hearing for organizing the largest march for freedom of the past decades. “Here in this city, we have stood against a selfish, petty, and malicious ruling power, and we will continue to stand up for freedom, for each other's freedom, and for the freedom of others,”
he added.
"If there were a trial, I would repeat what I said at the wonderful Budapest Pride march: our job is to show, through the power of love, that there is life outside this system, a life that is more beautiful, more free, and happier. And then, you will see the lies of this selfish and suffocating system crumble to pieces.
This is what's happening right now," he concluded the post.
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