Hungarian lawmakers on Tuesday by a 139-51 vote margin approved a bill that would remove anti-LGBTQ provisions from a 2021 “child protection” law the country’s former prime minister championed.

“It shall be forbidden to make accessible to persons who have not attained the age of 18 years advertisement that depicts sexuality in a gratuitous manner or that propagates or portrays divergence from self-identity corresponding to sex at birth, sex change or homosexuality,” reads Act LXXIX of 2021 that MPs approved in 2021.

The European Commission in 2022 challenged the law. Sixteen EU countries eventually joined the lawsuit against it.

Then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government defended the law. The EU’s top court, the EU Court of Justice, earlier this year struck it down. The BBC reported the EU after Tuesday’s vote released €4.2 billion ($4.67 billion) in funds it froze while Orbán’s government was in office.

“We are very happy that this got adopted,” Tamás Dombos of the Háttér Society, a Hungarian LGBTQ rights group, told the BBC. “We’ve been fighting this so-called child protection law for five years. There have been problems with the bill submitted to parliament, but most of those problems have been fixed.”

Péter Magyar became the country’s prime minister in May after his center-right Tisza party defeated Orbán’s Fidesz-KDNP coalition in elections that took place on April 12.

The new Hungarian government in June allowed the annual Budapest Pride march to take place in the country’s capital without restrictions — MPs in 2025 passed a bill that banned Pride events, and amended the Hungarian constitution to prohibit public LGBTQ events.

Magyar last month announced his government would amend a law that essentially bans same-sex couples from adopting children.

Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Maygar has said his government will amend a law that essentially bans same-sex couples from adopting children.

Lawmakers approved the effective adoption ban in 2020, when then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government was in power. Maygar announced plans to amend the law on Saturday when he was speaking to supporters in Budapest, the Hungarian capital.

Orbán and his government faced widespread criticism over its anti-LGBTQ crackdown that also included laws banning Pride events.

Maygar in April ousted Orbán in Hungary’s elections.

Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took part in the annual Budapest Pride march in the Hungarian capital.

The march took place less than two months after new Prime Minister Péter Maygar took office.

Hungarian lawmakers in 2025 passed a bill that banned Pride events and allowed authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify participants. MPs later amended the Hungarian constitution to ban public LGBTQ events.

More than 100,000 people defied the ban and participated in last year’s Budapest Pride parade. The event became one of the largest protests against then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his government since he took office in 2010.

Magyar’s center-right Tisza party ousted Orbán’s Fidesz-KDNP coalition in elections that took place on April 12. The European Union’s top court, the EU Court of Justice, days after Orbán’s ouster struck down Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ propaganda law that MPs approved in 2021.

Hungarian police last month announced they would allow the Budapest Pride march to take place without restrictions.

Authorities subsequently dropped charges against Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony over his role in organizing the city’s 2025 Pride march. Officials in Pécs, a city near Hungary’s border with Croatia, have also dropped charges against Géza Buzás-Hábel, who organized a 2025 Pride event.