LGBTIQ Equality Strategy 2020-2025

The Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) has published the Opinion of the European Committee of the Regions – Union of Equality: LGBTIQ Equality Strategy 2020-2025, of which we highlight, for the matter at hand:

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS (...)

(2) reiterates that the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ persons) are human rights and as such inherent to all persons, regardless of their legal status as non-nationals, refugees, migrants or foreign residents, whether they are women, men, children, elderly or disabled, without regard to their religion, ethnic origin or political opinions or to their sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or sex characteristics;

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What is the role of cities and regions? (...)

Fight against all forms of violence (...)

Free movement of persons and families

22. considers it important that the strategy specifically addresses the regional – in particular trans-regional – aspect of free movement, while respecting that (as enshrined in the Treaties) family law falls within the competence of the Member States, and points out that this may create obstacles to free movement, since, given the divergences in family law between the different Member States, family ties are often no longer recognised when crossing the EU’s internal borders, particularly in the case of LGBTIQ families;

23. welcomes the fact that the European Commission presented for the first time in November 2020 its EU Strategy for equality between lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, non-binary, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) people. Ensuring the safety of LGBTIQ people is one of the four pillars of this Commission Strategy.

However, the phenomenon of violence against LGBTIQ people has so far not been assessed with representative data, which would allow to go a step further and adopt relevant lines of work to combat this violence in the future.

Although the online survey ‘A Long Way to Go for LGBTI Equality’, conducted by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), provides valuable information on the experiences of discrimination and violence experienced by LGBTIQ people, being a voluntary online survey it is not statistically representative, as it is not based on a random sample. In this context, the Committee of the Regions calls on the European Commission, as part of its LGBTIQ Strategy, to undertake and regularly fund an anonymous and representative study on violence experienced by LGBTIQ people, including intimate partner violence, which also collects unreported cases and is carried out and assessed independently for all EU Member States;

24. fully agrees with the statement by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, that "if you are a mother or father in one country, so are you in all other countries" (5) Welcomes, therefore, the Announcement of a legislative initiative to support the mutual recognition of family relations between Member States;

25. calls on the Member States to ensure that clear information on the recognition of the cross-border rights of LGBTIQ people and their families in the EU is easily accessible, and that officials from all spheres of governance are fully informed;

26. endorses the request made by the European Parliament in its resolution on the rights of LGBTIQ persons in the European Union; (6)  on rainbow families and same-sex couples and urges the Commission to work on improving the position of rainbow families by: rigorous enforcement of cross-border family law provisions and enhanced dialogue with Member States (including specific dialogues on compliance with the Coman judgment) (7)), since substantive family law falls within their competence;

27. asks the local authorities send a positive signal to their LGBTIQ communities by showing courage in setting ambitious policies for LGBTIQ people; and to drive change from below, as in Turin (8), where the municipal administration officially recognises civil unions between citizens of the same sex, despite the fact that until 2016 there were no national provisions in this regard. Subsequently, Turin has once again been a pioneer by legally recognising same-sex couples as parents, although this possibility is not provided for in national legislation;

Helping LGBTIQ young people in the EU (...)

Impact of COVID-19 on the lives of LGBTIQ people (...)

Future prospects (...)