Ruling Fidesz MEPs said on Thursday that the European Parliament initiative on making gender-based violence a crime under EU law aims at “making it obligatory to accept the absurd idea that people are not born as men or women”. Balázs Hidvéghi and Lívia Járóka said in a joint statement: “It is especially sad that the EP’s left-wing majority is hiding behind the issue of violence against women in an effort to accomplish an ideologically motivated scheme.” Hidvéghi said the initiative uses the obscure term of gender-based violence in an effort to smuggle gender ideology into mandatory European Union regulation. “The far-left and green rapporteurs of the legislative initiative are basically asking the European Commission something that several member states have already rejected in connection with the Istanbul Convention. They are using a legal procedure in order make the idea obligatory that people were not born men or women, and biological characteristics do not differentiate the two sexes,” he said.
Járóka, a deputy speaker of the EP, said it was “utterly unacceptable” that they were hiding behind the protection of women and children in order to achieve their own ideological objectives. “Our penal code is one of the strictest in Europe, giving special protections to women and children,” she said. “We are making every effort to ensure that the Hungarian network for prevention, victim assistance and victim protection developed in recent years should be of an outstandingly high standard,” she added.