Let's live La Vie En Rose in Paris this October!

Our conference is a unique opportunity to share experiences, knowledge, and skills, to plan and coordinate joint campaigns and projects, and to learn about the latest developments in the struggle for equality and justice. Additionally, this is a great opportunity to meet many different people from all corners of Europe and to experience the magic of Paris, one of the most romantic cities in the world!

During the last year we witnessed more achievements towards freeing Europe from bigotry and discrimination. One of the high profile victories to which ILGA-Europe and its members contributed was the 'Buttiglione affair', which resulted in the reshuffle of the European Commission. Our cooperation with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on hate crimes is helping establish that homophobic violence must be treated as seriously as racially and ethnically motivated violence. But there is still a lot of work to be done and the recent reluctance by the municipal authorities to allow LGBT Pride events in Warsaw, Bucharest and Chişinău proved just that.

The theme of this year's conference is 'United in Diversity". We are working hard to ensure that the conference programme is not limited just to issues related primarily to the EU, but covers and provides space for debates, information sharing and brainstorming on a wide range of issues.

The social programme promises to be in truly French style - grand! On Thursday night the participants will be invited to a reception at the Paris Town Hall, an amazingly impressive building, on Friday night there will be a women's only event at the Paris Lesbian Film Festival, and on Saturday the closing party will be staged at a trendy disco near the Champs Elysée. The conference will take place at a modern conference centre in the Montparnasse district close to central Paris.

Now that you have realised you cannot afford to miss this event, you should remember that you can only take part if you register before 16 September 2005, this is very important as accommodation is limited, so register early to avoid disappointment (and before 1st August to benefit from a reduced conference fee!). Registration forms are available at www.ilga-europe.org.

For more information please contact
Juris Lavrikovs at + 32 2 609 54 16 / + 32 496 708 375

Notes for editors:

(1) ILGA-Europe is the European region of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) and works towards lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality at European level.

(2) 27th ILGA European Conference is hosted by ILGA-Europe Paris 2005 - an association of various LGBT organisations in France: www.ilgaeuropeparis2005.org

(3) Further information on the conference programme, registration and scholarship forms and other practical information will be available on our conference mini- website: www.ilga-europe.org/conference/paris/