 The 2004 Diversity Festival was initially planned to be organised with the support of the National Council for Combating Discrimination and Bucharest's Sector 3 Council, both of which later pulled out citing financial reasons, and resulting in the event being organised by ACCEPT with the support of several sponsors, including the Romanian Government, the British Council, the Goethe Institute, and the Embassy of Sweden in Bucharest.A gay pride parade through central Bucharest was also initially planned, but was later abandoned, with various newspapers stating that Romanian society was not ready for such an event on such a scale.Ştefan Iancu, the organiser of the 2004 Diversity Festival, stated to "Ziarul", on 3 May 2004, that, "We wanted to do this [a pride parade], but we don't know if we would succeed in convincing gay people to come out into the streets for various reasons.