Hands off our children, Hungary tells Czech FM amid anti-LGBT law dispute

Keep your hands off the Hungarian children, Hungarian State Secretary of Foreign Affairs Tamás Menczer told Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský (Pirates, Greens/EFA) who expressed his regrets that the Czech government will not join the European Commission’s lawsuit against Hungary’s anti-LGBT law.

The European Commission referred Hungary to the Court of Justice of the EU over the law banning the use of materials seen as promoting homosexuality and gender change at schools in mid-2022.

While France, Germany and other countries decided to join the lawsuit, the Czech government led by conservative Prime Minister Petr Fiala (ODS, ECR) decided not to get involved.

“I regret that the Czech Republic will not join the European lawsuit against Hungary’s anti-LGBTQI+ law. But we, in the Pirate Party, are not going to resign on this topic. Children are not threatened by seeing such characters on TV or in books. They are endangered by the artificial stirring up of hatred or the concealment of information,” Czech Foreign Minister Lipavský tweeted on Wednesday (5 April).

Budapest reacted immediately: “To the Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic: keep your hands off the Hungarian children!” Hungarian State Secretary of Foreign Affairs Tamás Menczer (Fidesz-KDNP) posted on Facebook on 6 April.

“What happens in the Czech kindergartens and schools is a matter for the Czechs, none of my business. Nor is it my business how Jan Lipavsky raises his child – if he has one,” Menczer wrote, adding that it is “good for the Czech Foreign Minister to know that in Hungary only the decision of the Hungarian people matters and that the Hungarians have clearly decided that the children must be protected.”

However, while Lipavský criticised Hungary’s controversial law, his government has decided not to join the lawsuit.

The Czech Republic has a “neutral position” as the country will chair the Visegrad group, which also includes Hungary, from July 2023.

(Aneta Zachová | EURACTIV.cz)

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