EU law to drive positive change: protection gap for LGBT people discriminated in schools, hospitals and police stations

On 21 March Ioannis Dimitrakopoulos from the EU Fundamental Rights Agency presented their latest report ‘Professionally speaking: challenges to achieving equality for LGBT people’ to the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. Mr Dimitrakopoulos highlighted a couple of interesting points.

Most Member States are committed to improve LGBT right; they recognise the positive effect of EU law and its role to drive change forward. To add, service-providers pointed out that public support and balanced media coverage is also necessary to change societal attitudes. Due to intolerance in many Central and Eastern Member States LGBT people are afraid to disclose their sexual orientation and gender identity, and consequently public authorities do not invest in what they perceive as a small problem due to lack of visibility.

Regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity, people should have the same right to education, healthcare and justice in Europe. Previously the Agency studied the experience of the rights-holder; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. This new report brings voice to the duty-bearer; service providers and their experiences. It focuses on areas where EU law does not yet offer protection against discrimination, such as in education and healthcare. Daily barriers for LGBT people further exacerbates the importance to adopt the EU Equal Treatment Directive to protect against discrimination in access to goods and services. It was proposed already in 2008 but despite many years of negotiations, the objections by a few Member States hinders its adoption.

In many Member States practitioners demonstrates positive practices, for example to tackle bullying in schools through trainings and curriculums, yet more is needed to empower teachers to support LGBT students. Doctors in several Member States are still of the view that homosexuality is an illness, and very few practitioners have knowledge of the health needs of transgender people, which have a negative impact on LGBT people’s access to quality care.

LGBT people’s vulnerability to violence correlates with lack of developed national hate crime legislation. When a crime is not recognised and a victim lack access to report and prosecute their perpetrator, the EU Victims’ Rights Directive becomes particular important, as it ensures non-discriminatory support services for all victims. As Social Platform we call for EU law to explicitly combat all forms of bias motivated violence by means of criminal law, read our position on bias violence.

The FRA proposes among others Member States to encourage LGBTI visibility, providing diversity strategies in public policies, and preparing for the future by transforming schools to a supportive environment for all.

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