Lauren Boland reports from Budapest

FORMER TAOISEACH LEO Varadkar has said he believes that Hungary is setting a “political trap” for the European Union in its attempts to ban Budapest’s Pride parade this weekend.

The former leader of Fine Gael said that Europe needs to stand in solidarity with people in Hungary who are being hurt by the country’s anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, but cautioned that it must not play into Viktor Orbán’s hand as the Hungarian prime minister tries to curry far-right favour ahead of a general election.

Hungarian authorities are using laws that limit visibility of LGBTQ+ related content and new legislation that restricts freedom of assembly to try to prevent celebrations of Pride by threatening fines or imprisonment for participants and organisers.

The move has been condemned by LGBTQ+ people in Hungary, as well as activists and politicians in many EU countries, who say it is a chilling step backwards for equality and that it goes against the principles of democracy.

Varadkar is in Budapest today to attend a conference at the Central European University on LGBTQ+ rights.

In an interview with The Journal at the conference, he said that other Europeans must show solidarity with Hungarians.

“We’re all European citizens. We all carry the same passport, and among the European rights that we have as European citizens is free speech and the right to freedom of expression, the right to be the person you are, and equality for the law for all citizens,” Varadkar said.

If that can be undermined and reversed in one part of the European Union, it can be in other parts too.

During his time in government, Varadkar met with Viktor Orbán on several occasions. Orbán’s party, Fidesz, used to be in the same political grouping in the EU parliament as Fine Gael – the European People’s Party – but was suspended from the group as its policies moved further and further to the right.

On his relationship with Orbán, Varadkar said: “We agreed on Brexit, for example, but then there were issues on which we fundamentally disagreed, like, Ukraine, where he is more pro-Russian and we’re obviously very much behind the right of the Ukrainian people to defend their country.

“And then also on issues of general personal liberty, not just issues relating to LGBT people but also issues relating to women. For example, he said that he doesn’t believe politics is a game for women. I would have a different view on that matter. We differed on a lot of things.”

The former Taoiseach said that the current Irish government has been “among the governments in Europe that have made very strong statements in relation to the erosion of freedoms here in Hungary”.

“I think we do need to be strategic and smart. In politics, you often have to choose between what feels right and what works,” he said.

“There are people here who are part of the opposition, who are leading the polls here in Hungary, who believe that they can win the election next year and bring Hungary back to the European centre – and they believe this could be a political trap; that the government here would like nothing more than for Brussels to come down them like a ton of bricks.

“Then, they [the Hungarian government] could say, ‘we’re the ones who are defending Hungarian independence from foreign actors, from the elites’ – all the usual stuff.

“I think it’s important to show solidarity, but I think in terms of any actions that are taken by the European Union, they need to make sure they don’t play into the hands of those who had 30 years to ban this march but decided only to do it the year before the elections.”

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In Ireland, activists have warned that the rise of far-right movements risks stirring up an increase of homophobia and transphobia if left unchecked – and that other countries in Europe need to be careful not to slip down the same path as Hungary.

“It’s happening all over the world, much more so in other parts of the world than Ireland, but we’re certainly not immune to the wave of illiberalism that is sweeping the world at the moment,” Varadkar said.

“I think what we need to do is expose the playbook,” he said, which he described as the tactic of choosing a minority group to represent as “an enemy”, which has often been used against LGBTQ+ people, migrants, Muslims or Jewish people.

The next step in the illiberal playbook is to “undermine the people who might stand up for [them], like the academics and the universities, like the NGOs, like the media”.

“And then when they’re all gone, then you take away everyone’s freedoms and rights and democracy. That’s the playbook [of illiberalism].”

It isn’t just about LGBT people, it’s about everyone.

“If you can ban a Pride march in Budapest, you can ban the students from marching next month, the trade unions the month after that, maybe your political opponents a few months after that, maybe even arrest them and put them in jail,” Varadkar said.

“This is the kind of thing we see happening from Turkey to even to a certain extent now in the United States. I think that’s what we need to warn people about. It’s not just about the rights of one minority. We’re just the ones who are being targeted in this country at the moment, but it could be anyone, and in the end, it’ll be everyone.”