Two rights groups in Romania have filed a lawsuit against the country with the European Court of Human Rights after an event in western Romania in support of the LGBTIQ+ community, was banned by the local authorities on allegedly spurious grounds for three consecutive years.
ACCEPT and ARK Oradea accuse the City Hall of systemic discrimination, by violating several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, including non-discrimination and freedom of peaceful assembly.
Since 2023, the local community has failed to obtain a permit for the Oradea PRIDE with local authorities providing ‘fictitious reasons.’
In 2024 the Oradea City Hall informed the organizers that all the public spaces that Oradea PRIDE requested were already reserved while this year they invoked at the last minute municipal works, transforming the city into an emergency construction site, just before the march.
However, the LGBTIQ+ community “did not allow itself to be intimidated and gathered in the street, as a sign of protest, more than 500 participants of Oradea PRIDE 2025 were isolated by the police on a street closed for works, despite the concern for the safety of citizens that the authorities had invoked in the provision prohibiting the march.”
Organizers and participants were fined, which they later challenged in court, supported by ACCEPT.
Lawyer Iustina Ionescu, who represents the case at the ECHR, said: “In the Oradea case, we have witnessed a pattern of exclusion of LGBT people from the public space, which violates the state’s obligation of neutrality and impartiality. Negative reactions in society, if any, impose an increased protection obligation on the part of the state, not a limitation on the right to peaceful assembly of the group concerned. In the case, the state acted contrary to what the ECHR standard establishes. We appealed directly to the ECHR because in Romania we did not have an effective appeal, in due time, through which we could obtain a decision before the scheduled date of the march.”
“The actions of the authorities in Oradea represent not only a flagrant violation of the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights, but also a dangerous precedent that calls into question the state’s ability to guarantee the rights and freedoms of its citizens.
“No local administration can decide who has and who does not have the right to public space. When a city hall abusively prohibits a peaceful demonstration, it is no longer just about Oradea PRIDE and the LGBTIQ+ community, but about respecting the rule of law and fundamental freedoms. We will stand by the LGBTIQ+ community in Oradea and we will use all the legal tools we have at our disposal until every person has access to the public space.“, said Victor Ciobotaru, executive director of Accept.
As a result “of the repeated abuses and obstacles placed by the local authorities on the LGBTIQ+ community in Oradea, ACCEPT and ARK Oradea are asking the ECHR to find the abusive, unjustified and discriminatory nature of the ban on the Oradea PRIDE 2025 march and to hold that the local authorities have violated the positive obligations incumbent on the state to guarantee the effective exercise of freedom of assembly and expression.”
The applicants ask the European courts to order general measures by which the Romanian state prevents the repetition of such situations, including the revision of the local regulatory framework and the training of the authorities on the application of ECHR standards.
“The repeated ban on Oradea PRIDE raises serious problems regarding the respect of fundamental rights and the obligations that local authorities have towards the citizens they are supposed to represent. Our approach to the ECHR is necessary to clarify these violations and to establish guarantees to prevent similar situations in the future, both in Oradea and in any other place in Romania. ARK ORADEA Association remains committed to defending the right to peaceful assembly and promoting an administrative framework in which decisions regarding access to public space are made transparently, non-discriminatory and in accordance with European standards.” said Iulian Dițiu, president of ARK Oradea Association.
