All candidate countries are required to meet the Copenhagen Criteria, namely to preserve democratic governance and human rights, a functioning market economy, and to assume the obligations of EU membership. In addition, the countries are required to transpose the EU legislation into national laws and, more importantly, to implement and enforce them through the appropriate administrative and judicial structures.

ILGA-Europe’s main focus of our advocacy work in the accession process is to ensure that human rights issues of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people are incorporated in partnership agreements with the countries and are reflected in national laws and policies

Existing EU law includes two pieces of legislation of particular importance in the context of sexual orientation discrimination: the Framework Directive for equal treatment in employment forbids such discrimination in all aspects of the employment relationship; while the Charter of Fundamental Rights prohibits “any discrimination” based on sexual orientation.

Respecting human rights must be taken to include, inter alia, respect for those guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

It is clear that, both in terms of the acquis communautaire, and of the human rights criteria for accession, there is an obligation on the institutions of the European Union to ensure that applicant countries have:

• established respect for the human rights of LGBT people,
• provided the necessary protection for this group from discrimination

ILGA-Europe closely monitors these developments in partnership with national organisations working on promoting the rights of LGBT people. We submit regular country information on sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination to the relevant European Institutions (European Commission and the European Parliament) and the national governments; monitor accession countries action plans implementations, specifically in reference to the adoption of comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation and lobby for the adoption of LGBT inclusive national anti-discrimination laws.

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For more information, please contact Lilit Poghosyan, Senior Programmes and Policy Officer.