Crossing the Rubicon? The Commission’s use of Article 2 TEU in the infringement action on LGBTIQ+ rights in Hungary

Abstract

The publication on the Official Journal of the European Union of the text of an infringement procedure pending before the Court of Justice is rarely – if ever a moment that triggers the attention of the EU law scholars’ community. Case C-769/22 Commission v Hungary is however the exception to the rule. The published text of the action reveals that, for the first time, the Commission has directly relied on Article 2 TEU, the provision proclaiming democracy, the rule of law and human rights as the ‘founding values’ of the European Union, in an infringement procedure before the Court. To be more precise, the claim of the Commission is that the Court should declare that ‘by adopting the legislation cited in the first paragraph, Hungary has infringed Article 2 TEU’. The piece of legislation in question is the 2021 Hungarian law ‘adopting stricter measures against persons convicted of pedophilia and amending certain law for the protection of children’. The Commission’s framing of the infringement procedure has already captured the attention of many commentators, and rightly so. This could indeed be a landmark case: the question of the