Junior emancipation minister Mariëtte Paul will represent the Dutch government at this month’s Pride march in Budapest, which Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán wants to outlaw.

Amsterdam’s mayor Femke Halsema has also said she will join the parade in support of her colleague, Gergely Karacsony, who has defied moves by Orbán’s Fidesz party to cancel the event.

The Hungarian parliament passed a law in March allowing police to cancel LGBTQ marches, ostensibly to protect children, and use facial recognition cameras to keep records of anyone who attends them.

But Karacsony said this year’s Pride would be a municipal event celebrating freedom, for which “no permits are required”.

Paul will only take part in the march on June 28 if it is allowed to go ahead, but she will also speak at a reception for the organisers of the parade the evening before.

In a statement, she said she wanted to make clear “that the cabinet stands for the rights of LHBTIQ+ people across Europe.”

“The European Union is a union of values. That means people are allowed to be who they are and love whoever they want to,” she said.

News that the cabinet was planning to send a delegation to Budapest enraged Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right PVV party and a close friend of Orbán.

He posted a message on X, better known as Twitter, last month blasting the decision as “embarrassing”. “Let the cabinet do its job instead of joining in with this insanity,” he wrote.