Implementation report on the EU LGBTIQ Equality Strategy 2020-2025
The European Parliament adopted by 392 votes to 119, with 32 abstentions, a resolution on the implementation of the EU LGBTIQ Equality Strategy 2020-2025.
Parliament welcomed the Commission’s LGBTIQ Equality Strategy 2020-2025. However, it expressed deep concern about the disparities in openness to the Strategy between the Member States as well as the lack of implementation of certain key actions. While acknowledging the progress made for the implementation of the LGBTIQ Equality Strategy 2020-2025, Members expressed concern about the discrimination and violence suffered by LGBTIQ+ persons in the EU and their consequences for the full enjoyment of free and dignified lives.
The resolution also deplored the fact that the horizontal anti-discrimination directive has been blocked in the Council since 2008 and considered that any update to this proposal by the Commission must build on Parliament’s position, address intersectional discrimination and explicitly prohibit discrimination on any combination of grounds.
Members expressed deep concern with the rise of hate speech, hate crimes and violence against LGBTIQ+ persons, including in online platforms. They recalled the need for preventive and protective public policy regarding bias-motivated hate speech, hate crimes and violence against LGBTIQ+ persons.
Recommendations
Parliament called on the EU and the Member States to:
- ensure the true mainstreaming of LGBTIQ+ rights across all EU policies;
- include sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics in the grounds taken into account in the EU anti-discrimination legislation;
- tackle the cost of living and housing crisis, including by defining specific measures for the LGBTIQ+ people;
- expand coverage of healthcare services, allowing LGBTIQ+ persons to seek specific care, including sexual and reproductive health and technologies. In this regard, Parliament called for a ban on genital mutilation, in particular intersex genital mutilation and female genital mutilation as well as a ban on forced abortions and on forced sterilisations;
- provide greater funding for the provision of services for victims of gender-based violence and for them to support LGBTIQ+ victims, in particular LGBTIQ+ women, addressing their specific needs and experiences;
- recognise marriage and parenthood of same-gender couples;
- take further steps to guarantee equal rights for LGBTIQ+ people with disabilities, through explicit protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity that are needed in all areas of life including employment, housing, education, public accommodations, and credit;
- adopt national LGBTIQ+ action plans and strategies until 2025.
The Commission is called on to:
- secure a mandate of the Equality and Diversity Commissioner in the next term;
- expand the Erasmus+ funding under the topic ‘Promoting LGBT+ equality’ through active communication efforts in cooperation with national authorities;
- ensure support for LGBTIQ+ equality in action under the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund and give access to asylum to LGBTIQ+ persons, including those from third countries classified as safe countries;
- ensure that LGBTIQ+ persons are given support as part of budgetary and funding instruments, as well as of wider development aid programmes;
- support candidate countries and potential candidate countries in the implementation of EU legislation, including in the field of LGBTIQ+ rights, and monitor their progress;
- further improve the possibility of regranting and to provide flexible funding to enable small, grassroots human rights defenders and other civil society actors working on the promotion of LGBTIQ+ rights to access such funding, in the Union and in third countries;
- draw up a new LGBTIQ+ Equality Strategy for 2025-2030 and communicate a timeline before the 2024 European Parliament elections;
- pay particular attention groups in vulnerable situations, such as LGBTIQ+ children and youth.