Hungarian President Katalin Novak used her veto power to reject a law widely seen as discriminatory against LGBTQ+ people. She sent the law back to parliament, which urged it to remove a controversial paragraph that gives the right to anonymously report certain same-sex couples to the government. The president’s approach is a rare gesture of rejection of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s policies, Politico.eu reported on Saturday, citing News.ro.

Earlier this month, Hungary’s parliament approved a law that, in theory, transposes an EU directive that protects integrity whistleblowers, but would also allow the reporting of those who challenge the “constitutionally recognized role of marriage and the family” and those who challenge rights children “to an identity corresponding to their sex at birth.”

This, as President Katalin Novak stated in a letter to the National Assembly, goes beyond the transposition of EU law, as the controversial section “does not strengthen, but rather weakens the protection of fundamental values”.

However, parliamentarians can override President Novak’s veto. But regardless of the outcome, the president’s gesture is a rare challenge to the policies of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, although Katalin Novak is considered a politician close to him, who held senior positions in his FIDESZ party and whom Viktor Orbán elevated to the position of head of state.

Orban’s anti-LGBT laws

For more than ten years, Viktor Orbán has taken decisive measures against LGBTQ+ rights. A year after coming to power, in 2010, his party adopted a new Constitution banning same-sex marriage. The document was later amended to prohibit same-sex couples from adopting children. This put Budapest at odds with Brussels.

The European Commission has accused Hungary before the EU bloc’s highest court of law of passing a law that the EU executive says discriminates against people based on their sexual orientation and gender identity. It’s an “anti-propaganda” law through which Hungary seeks to ban minors from accessing content that “promotes or represents” what it calls “a departure from self-identification corresponding to birth sex, gender reassignment or homosexuality.”

The European Parliament and the European Commission, along with more than 10 other European countries, joined the European Court of Justice lawsuit against the Hungarian law, arguing that the law violates EU internal market rules, fundamental human rights and EU values.

Hungary used to be one of the most liberal countries in the region. Homosexuality was decriminalized here in the early 1960s, and civil unions between same-sex partners were recognized in 1996.