This report is published by: ILGA - EUROPE the European Region of the International Lesbian and Gay Association Tervurenlaan 94/1 B-1040 Brussels [email protected] www.ilga-europe.org ILGA-Europe enjoys consultative status with the Council of Europe and is member of the Platform for Social NGOs Project co-ordinators: Tatjana Greif (Ljubljana) and Adrian Coman (Bucharest) Design: Lucian David [[email protected]] The report is available at ILGA Europe’s website. Organisations in the accession countries are encouraged to create links from their web pages. © Authors/ILGA-Europe, Brussels, March 2001 ISBN 973-0-02296-8 Readers are encouraged to copy and disseminate this document widely, provided that appropriate reference is made to the source Printed in Romania by Arta Graficã Bucharest Printing commissioned by ACCEPT (Bucharest Acceptance Group) ILGA-Europe The International Lesbian and Gay Association activities is available at ILGA-Europe’s web-site (ILGA) was founded in 1978 and is a world-wide www.ilga-europe.org. federation of more than 300 groups and organisations in more than 70 countries on all continents fighting ILGA has also given impetus and support to gay for equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and and lesbian groups in, for example, Latin America transgendered people. In December 1996, ILGA- and South Africa, and not least played an important Europe became the first regional association of ILGA role in the emergence and development of the first to be formally established. gay and lesbian organisations in the former “East- Bloc”. ILGA’s support for activists and groups in During its 23 years of existence, ILGA has called these countries dates back to 1982 when its Vienna- for and carried out numerous campaigns for law based member Homosexuelle Initiative (HOSI) Wien reform in many countries and against individual started the Eastern Europe Information Pool (EEIP) cases of discrimination, highlighting many cases of on behalf of ILGA. It reached out to activists in human rights abuses against lesbians and gays. these countries, facilitated information exchange, supported activities such as the production and cir- Major successes of ILGA’s lobbying on the inter- culation of gay samisdat newsletters in Polish, and national level include the deletion of “homosexu- put together annual activity and news reports. It ality” from the World Health Organization’s Inter- published a first book on the situation of lesbians national Classification of Diseases, and the deci- and gays in Eastern Europe2 and helped organise sion of Amnesty International to adopt persons im- the first ILGA sub-regional conferences for East- prisoned solely on the grounds of their sexual ori- ern and Southern Europe which took place even entation as prisoners of conscience. before the lifting of Iron Curtain and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The first was organised in Budapest in ILGA has undertaken sustained lobbying of many 1987, and nine more were to follow: Warsaw 1988, international organisations, such as the United Na- Budapest 1989, Leipzig 1990, Prague 1991, tions, the Organization for Security and Co-opera- Bratislava 1992, Vienna 1993, Palanga/Lithuania tion in Europe (OSCE) and, in particular, the Coun- 1994, Kiev 1995, and Ljubljana 1996. cil of Europe and the European Union. In the last four years, ILGA-Europe has intensified its lobby- ILGA’s first regional conference for Europe ever ing activities with the two latter organisations in held in a former “East-Bloc” country was organised Strasbourg and Brussels. The inclusion of “sexual by its Latvian member LASV in Riga in 1995. orientation” in Article 13 TEC and in the non-dis- ILGA-Europe’s annual conference in 2000 was crimination clause of the EU Charter of Fundamen- hosted by ACCEPT in Bucharest. tal Rights were two of many positive results to which ILGA Europe contributed at EU level. ILGA- In all these years, ILGA and ILGA-Europe have tried Europe has also worked for the adoption of the first to support the lesbian and gay movement in these measures based on this Article 13.1 It has also car- countries as much as its own resources and possi- ried out several EU-funded projects, and in 2000 bilities allowed it to do so. received, for the first time, core funding from the European Commission. In 1998, ILGA-Europe was granted consultative status with the Council of Eu- rope. More and detailed information about these 1 Council Directive 2000/78/EC of 27 November 2000 establishing a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation, OJ 2000 L 303/16, and Council Decision 2000/750/EC of 27 November 2000 establishing a Community action programme to combat discrimination (2001-2006), OJ 2000 L 303/23. 2 HOSI Wien/Auslandsgruppe (Gudrun Hauer, Kurt Krickler, Marek, Dieter Schmutzer – eds.): Rosa Liebe unterm roten Stern. Zur Lage der Lesben und Schwulen in Osteuropa. Frühlings Erwachen, Hamburg 1984. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The ILGA-Europe Executive Board gratefully acknowledges the contributions which made this report possible: Financial support: This report was produced as part of a project supported by the Open Society Institute. Production and editing: We would like to thank Tatjana Greif and Adrian Coman for the co-ordination of this project, all authors of the accession country reports, and Mark Bell for writing chapter 14. We also want to express our gratitude to Jackie Lewis, Mark Bell, Pierre Noël and Kurt Krickler for editing this report, also to Helmut Graupner for proof-reading the legal information contained in this report. Finances and accounting: We would like to thank Steffen Jensen and Nigel Warner, ILGA-Europe treasurers, also Florin Ghiþã, ACCEPT (Bucharest Acceptance Group) Office Manager, for taking care of the finances and ac- counting of this project. Design and layout: We are grateful to Lucian David for the final design and layout and to Mark Bell and Christian Högl for their support. The Executive Board of ILGA-Europe, Brussels, March 2001 TABLE OF CONTENTS: Introduction.........................................................................................................7 Bulgaria..............................................................................................................9 Cyprus..............................................................................................................13 The Czech Republic........................................................................................18 Estonia.............................................................................................................23 Hungary............................................................................................................29 Latvia................................................................................................................35 Lithuania..............................................................................................................44 Malta.................................................................................................................48 Poland..............................................................................................................50 Romania...........................................................................................................55 Slovakia............................................................................................................65 Slovenia...........................................................................................................69 Turkey...............................................................................................................76 The EU – a new source of rights for citizens in the accession countries?.....80 Appendix 1: More Information about the EU.................................................90 Appendix 2: Contributors and LGBT groups in the accession countries.....94 Introduction ILGA - EUROPE Introduction Three years after the publication of the “Equality vice, military service, migration and asylum seek- Report”1 on the situation of lesbians and gay men ers. The authors of the country reports also tried to in the EU Member States, ILGA-Europe has pro- cover the social factors which clearly mirror the duced the current report, “Equality for Lesbians and above mentioned legal factors, e. g. public opinion, Gay Men - A Relevant Issue in the EU Accession homophobia, the approach of the media, violence Process”, with a view to filling the information gap against gays and lesbians, and the influence of regarding the situation for lesbians and gay men in churches and religions. Positive developments and the candidate countries. The report was produced information on the infrastructure of the LGBT com- as part of the project “Lesbian and Gay People in munity and culture are also reported, together with Candidate Countries to EU Membership” with fi- recommendations for improving the legal and so- nancial support from the Open Society Institute. cial status of lesbians and gay men. All 13 accession countries are represented with in- In conclusion, two things are evident from all the dividual reports: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, information presented in this book. First, it is clear Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, that sexual orientation discrimination and homopho- Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Turkey. bic attitudes are widespread in the accession coun- A further chapter presents the European Union’s leg- tries; and secondly, that addressing this discrimina-