BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungary’s parliament voted on Monday to temporarily “banish” six opposition lawmakers from the building and cut their salaries after they used smoke flares during a protest in the chamber against a law banning Pride marches by LGBTQ+ communities.
It is the first time that lawmakers have been barred from the chamber since Hungary’s transition to democracy in 1990, according to parliament’s press office.
Parliament, dominated by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s nationalist, socially conservative Fidesz party, approved the ban on Pride marches on March 18, triggering protests and drawing criticism from over 20 envoys based in Budapest.
On the day of the vote, independent lawmaker Akos Hadhazy and two from the small Momentum party lit up smoke flares. Three other Momentum lawmakers also scattered around the chamber manipulated photos depicting Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin kissing as the voting progressed.
The protesting lawmakers also played Russia’s national anthem, in a gesture intended to highlight parallels between Orban’s measures against sexual minorities with those adopted by Putin’s government.
Parliament on Monday approved a decision by Speaker Laszlo Kover, a Fidesz member, to ban the lawmakers who held the smoke flares for 12 parliamentary working days and strip them of six months’ salary. It also backed Kover’s decision to ban the three other members for six days and deny them four months’ salary.
Parliament will sit for 11 more days of its spring session before a summer break, meaning three of the lawmakers will not be able to retake their seats until the autumn.
The three members who held smoke flares had staged a “provocative, anti-social” protest that posed a health and fire hazard, the text of the resolutions on the parliament’s website says. Obstructing a parliamentary session is “one of the gravest disciplinary offences”, it says.
All six lawmakers had petitioned parliament’s Immunity Committee, seeking an annulment of their punishment and arguing that the Speaker’s ruling lacked both factual and legal justification.
Orban, who faces a tough challenge from a new opposition party ahead of a 2026 election, has criticised the LGBTQ+ community and also pledged to crack down on foreign funding of independent media and NGOs in Hungary.
(Reporting by Anita Komuves; Editing by Gareth Jones)
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