On 29 May 2020, the President of Hungary, János Áder, signed the law which makes legal gender recognition, or the process of changing one’s gender marker on one’s identity documents, impossible in Hungary. This has had and will continue to have an extremely damaging effect on the safety and health of trans and intersex people in Hungary, as their official documents will no longer match their gender expression or external appearance, thereby leaving them vulnerable to discrimination, violence, and exclusion from public and private services in all areas of life.

Transvanilla has recently collected over 100,000 signatures on allout.org who are joining us in asking the EC to take steps to ensure the protection of trans and intersex people in Hungary. It is clear that the attacks on our community will keep continuing, as evidenced by the recent proposal of a bill in the Hungarian Parliament, which would amend the Hungarian Constitution (Fundamental Law) to include provisions that "The mother is female, the father is male", and that "Hungary protects children's right to their identity in line with their birth sex, and their right to education according to our country's constitutional identity and system of values based on Christian culture". This bill was introduced on 10th November, and would serve to force parents and educational institutions to educate children in line with the governments understanding of sex and gender. It would also ban LGBT educational programs from schools and label them to be called LGBT propaganda.

“Trans and intersex people are not protected from discrimination anymore in Hungary. Without being able to legally change gender and first name, ordinary things like picking up a parcel, opening a bank account or simply presenting their ID can become a daily source of difficulties and humiliation. We need the European Union to condemn the Hungarian govenrment’s actions against trans and intersex citizens and to protect our fundamental rights.” - says Barnabás Hidasi, President of Transvanilla.

Trans and intersex people in Hungary need help. We need a strong signal from the European Union that this attack on trans and intersex people violates the European values of non-discrimination. We also need the EU to start taking preventive action, by including these issues in the ongoing Article 7 procedures against Hungary. The new law adopted in May directly contravenes with the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of Hungary, and therefore violates Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union (TEU) in terms of the responsibility of Member States to uphold the rule of law.

We hope that Ursula von der Leyen and the European Commission will listen to the voices of these 103,520 persons, and trans and intersex people in Hungary.

Do you wonder how you can help us? You can find our call-to-action page here. And here you can find other ways to engage.