By Euronews/Horváth Ferenc
Published on
The Hungarian government has published a 220-page, comprehensive child-protection report which concluded that the child adoption system is on the verge of collapse.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
The document will serve as the basis for rewriting adoption rules, a move that has triggered fierce political reactions among opposition parties.
Prime Minister Péter Magyar announced that the government will change the regulations governing adoption by single persons and same-sex couples, arguing that the current system is unsustainable.
He stated that deciding who may adopt a child should not be a political decision but one taken by professionals, like psychologists and child-protection experts. Politicians, Magyar said, need to take a step back from this issue.
He stressed that the “system cannot function properly in its current state,” and that the overpowering consideration must always be that children can grow up in a loving family, not the parents’ sexual orientation or marital status.
The Hungarian premier said the government is already working on amendments to the existing legislation, which was introduced earlier by Fidesz under longtime Prime Minister and Magyar’s predecessor, Viktor Orbán.
The system Magyar wants to overhaul, in its current state, favours married couples and severely restricts the options available to single people and same-sex couples.
The announcement has generated strong criticism in local media, with opposition outlets slamming the move, accusing Magyar of “giving in to the LGBTQ lobby”, while independent media reported it as a pledge to restore professional standards.
Policy break from Orbán-era
The move marks a sharp ideological and policy break with the legacy of the Orbán governments in power between 2010 and 2026, and is one of the most significant steps taken yet on human rights and child protection in Hungary since the change of government in April 2026.
In December 2020, the Orbán government tightened the Hungarian Fundamental Law and the adoption act, which tightly defined a mother as a biological female and the father a biological male, effectively restricting adoption to married couples as the default.
Because same-sex couples in Hungary cannot marry, and can only enter into registered partnerships, they had previously been able to adopt by having one partner submit the application as a single person.
A 2020 law ended this loophole, as it forced single applicants to adopt only with a valid personal ministerial permit, initially granted by former President Katalin Novák and later by the minister responsible for family policy.
The amended legislation effectively blocked members of the LGBTQ community almost entirely from the possibility of having children.
After the Tisza Party won the elections in April this year by a landslide, thereby ending Fidesz’s 16 years in power, international and domestic human rights organisations expected immediate steps to restore LGBTQ rights.
Pressure increased further when, just before the vote, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Hungary’s earlier “child-protection/homophobic” law seriously breaches EU law.
According to the government’s narrative, the current system is unsustainable because, while large numbers of children live in state-care, suitable prospective parents, whether single or in same-sex relationships, are blocked in the system due to strict political filters and bureaucratic hurdles.
The new measure effectively restores the pre-2020, profession-based assessment system and sends a strong signal that the new government intends to approach social issues, previously used as symbolic political battlegrounds, in a pragmatic, expert-led way.
