ILGA-Europe launches today Meeting the challenges of accession, a report highlighting sexual orientation discrimination that lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people face in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. This report illustrates with percentages and quotes from LGB people the extent of discrimination in the family, in health services, in education, in the workplace, in housing, in the army and in the church. Those range from direct and indirect discrimination to harassment and physical violence.
To prevent discrimination and violence, many people tend to conceal their sexual orientation. Concealment is particularly frequent in the public sphere i.e. in the workplace, in health care and housing, in the church or in the streets. Furthermore, to bring to an end the ongoing violence and discrimination experienced, a majority of respondents consider emigration to countries perceived to be more tolerant.
The ultimate aim of the report is to place the fight against discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation at the core of the “acquis communautaires” and to reinforce the instruments dealing with discrimination. To achieve this, the report puts forward some recommendations to the new member states and to the EU institutions. At national level, these recommendations concern primarily a general ban of discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation coupled with the establishment of equality bodies to monitor and prevent discrimination. At EU level, the Commission needs to ensure that the framework directive is implemented properly and that legislation and policies go beyond the field of employment to extend to access to goods, facilities and services as it is the case for race anti-discrimination.
Christine Loudes, author of the report, said: “The importance of strong anti-discrimination legislation at national level is made clear by the current situation in some member states which recently joined the EU. The difficult position of LGB people in Poland was on the front cover of the papers recently. Meanwhile, the implementation of the Framework Directive on Equal Treatment in Employment and Occupation proves difficult in Latvia, for instance, where the Parliamentary Human Rights and Public Affairs Commission, which is responsible for the Bill, amended it and deleted the ban on sexual orientation discrimination.”
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