European Parliament supports cohesive EU approach on human rights

ILGA-Europe welcomes the votes and the fact that the Members of the European Parliament rejected a number of proposed amendments aiming to curtail its scope or water down its substance.  

Evelyne Paradis, Executive Director of ILGA-Europe, said:

“Today’s report is a clear evidence of the European Parliament’s ongoing commitment to hold EU institutions and member states accountable when it comes to human rights. We need the Parliament to remains this driving force for human rights in the Union.”

“We welcome that the report contains a number of specific actions for the European Union to put its work on LGBTI human rights in a strategic frame. We are advocating for an EU LGBTI strategy and glad to see our vision of how LGBTI human rights should be dealt with in the EU is shared by the European Parliament.”

Today’s report contains a number of LGBTI specific recommendations:

• Calls on the European Commission to put forward an action plan or strategy at EU level for equality on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity, as repeatedly called for by Parliament and as promised by Commissioner Jourová in the process of the Commission hearings;
• Calls for the Anti-Discrimination Directive which seeks to implement the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation, to be unblocked in the Council;
• Calls for a review of the framework decision in order for it to fully cover all forms of hate crime and crimes committed with a bias or discriminatory motive, and to clearly define consistent investigation and prosecution standards;
• Calls on EU member states to facilitate legal gender recognition procedures which do not require sterilisation
• Deplores the fact that transgender people are still considered mentally ill in the majority of Member States and calls on them to review national mental health catalogues, while ensuring that medically necessary treatment remains available for all trans people;
• Strongly regrets that genital "normalisation" surgery of intersex infants is widespread, despite not being medically necessary.