MEP Cyrus Engerer has been appointed the Socialists and Democrats’ lead negotiator in an upcoming resolution which is calling for all the European Union to be declared an LGBTIQ freedom zone.
The resolution follows backlash surrounding controversy in over 100 municipalities across Poland, and more recently Hungary, which have declared themselves free from so-called “LGBTIQ ideology” or have adopted “Regional Charters of Family Rights”, discriminating in particular against women, single-parent and rainbow families.
“With this resolution the European Parliament sends a clear, clear message. LGBTIQ persons are not an ideology. We are people with fundamental human rights and no one, not even a member state of the European Union can take our fundamental human rights away from us,” Engerer said.
The measures in Poland and Hungary call for local governments to refrain from taking any action to encourage tolerance of LGBTIQ people or provide funding to NGOs working to promote equal rights or educational anti-discrimination measures or to, in any other way, support LGBTIQ people.
The discrimination that LGBTIQ persons face in a number of member states is a European issue that goes against the Charter of Fundamental Human Rights, instils fear in a number of people and trumps upon the freedom of movement principle that the European Union is built upon.
Diversity and the protection of human rights are core European values, Engerer said.
He added that European Institutions cannot continue to close a blind eye when it comes to the “atrocious treatment” of LGBTIQ people by Prime Minister Victor Orban and the Polish PiS government. The EU must not continue to tolerate these governments’ implementation of their politics of hatred, Engerer insisted.
He said it was “an honour and a privilege” for him to have been “handpicked for this historic task”, a few months following his election to the European Parliament. “What we did in Malta over the past years now needs to be extended to the rest of the Union and beyond”, he said.