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The Guardian
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Hungary's crackdown on LGBTQ+ content violates human rights, says EU's top court
A Hungarian law banning content about LGBTQ+ people from schools and primetime TV has been found to violate basic human rights and freedom of expression by a senior legal scholar at the European court of justice. The non-binding opinion from the court's advocate-general, Tamara Ćapeta, issued on Thursday, represents a comprehensive demolition of the arguments made by the Hungarian government defending its so-called childprotection law, passed in 2021. The legislation, which has been likened to Russia's infamous 'gay propaganda law', means that gay and transgender people or themes cannot feature in school educational material or any TV show, film or advert shown before 10pm. In a resounding opinion, Ćapeta wrote that the law was not based on any scientific proof but a value judgment or – backing a position presented by the European parliament to the court – 'a prejudice that homosexual and non-cisgender [transgender] life is not of equal value or status as heterosexual and cisgender life'. Far from protecting children from harm, she concluded, the legislation 'expands such harm'. In her 69-page opinion she wrote: 'The stigmatising effects of the Hungarian legislation, which creates a climate of hostility towards LGBTI persons, may affect the feelings of identity, self-esteem and self-confidence of LGBTI persons. 'Minors who belong to the LGBTI community are especially affected, as the removal of information about LGBTI lives from the public sphere prevents them from realising that their life is not abnormal.' 'It also affects their acceptance by their peers, in school or other environments and thus affects their right to a 'private social life' as well. Therefore, rather than protecting minors from harm, the contested legislation expands such harm.' She concluded that Hungary had violated fundamental rights of human dignity, respect for family life and non-discrimination under the EU treaty and charter of fundamental rights. Ćapeta supported arguments that the law also breached EU commerce and audiovisual laws that prevent governments from imposing restrictions on media companies without a well-founded public interest. The opinion does not bind the court but ECJ judges follow the advocate general in most cases. The Hungarian government has been contacted for comment. Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion The European Commission began legal proceedings against Hungary in 2021 after the law was passed. The provisions against LGBTQ+ content were seen as especially stigmatising because they were part of a child protection law targeting child abusers. The opinion comes as Hungary continues its crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights. Lawmakers in April passed a constitutional amendment that codifies a ban on Pride events and allows authorities to use facial recognition technology to track attenders so they can be fined. Last month 17 EU member states, including France and Germany, signed a letter organised by the Dutch government condemning Hungary's anti-LGBTIQ+ legislation and urging Budapest to revise these measures. Many of those member states, 16, as well as the European parliament, joined the European Commission's case against Hungary on the law banning LGBTQ+ content.
Daily Mail
29-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
British expat WINS French court battle to restore pre-Brexit right that could open floodgates for Brits
A British woman living in France is overjoyed to have her voting rights restored in a move that could shake up post-Brexit rules. Alice Bouilliez said she was 'extremely surprised' that a court in Auch, south-west France, ruled she would be able to vote in local elections. Experts now believe the shock ruling could set a precedent for all Brits who had permanent resident status in the European country before the referendum. Ms Bouilliez, who has lived in France for nearly four decades, was able to vote before the Brexit deal went through in 2020 but it was not made clear what her rights would be afterwards. Despite having residency and being married to a Frenchman, Ms Bouillez never became a citizen - in part down to her oath she took to the British Crown while working as a civil servant in the Foreign Office. The retiree, alongside several other disgruntled Brits, eventually took the case to the European court of justice in 2022 after years of legal battles, although they ruled against her. Their argument, based on the advice of advocate general Anthony Collins, was that 'nationality of a member state' was an 'essential condition of a person to be able to acquire and retain the status of citizens of the union and to benefit fully from the rights attaching to that status'. Her being stripped of her voting rights was 'an automatic consequence of the sole sovereign decision taken by the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union'. But Ms Bouillez's lawyer argued that the court could not disenfranchise those who already had the rights protected under the EU treaty before Brexit - an argument that proved true. 'The court ruled that Alice had not committed any crime and that to lose her voting rights was a fundamental and disproportionate infringement of her voting rights,' Julien Fouchet said after today's ruling. 'The right to vote is a common good, it is more than just a right,' he was reported saying in The Guardian. An 'extremely happy' Ms Bouillez said 'when I went to get the ruling from the court I was extremely surprised because I was expecting a knock on the knuckles'. The barrister added that this ruling could now restore the rights of Brits on the continent if they wanted their name on the electoral register for local elections. He said: 'The French and UK governments should have a bilateral treaty reciprocating the right to vote in municipal elections. 'I see this judgment as an opportunity, especially in light of the recent UK-EU summit, to get an agreement on this.' Before the Brexit referendum, Brits living in France could vote in municipal and European parliamentary elections but not in national, presidential or legislative elections. This was generally the same rules across most European countries. Europeans also had these same rights living in the UK but most countries - apart from Ireland, Cyprus and Malta - are now unable to vote here. The British government had tried to make reciprocal voting rights part of the Brexit deal but the EU insisted on having bilateral treaties instead. And in 2018, the House of Commons passed a motion which insisted British nationals who have an EU citizenship should have 'the range of rights and protections afforded to individuals as European Union citizens are integral to a person's European identity'.
The Guardian
29-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
British woman wins back pre-Brexit right to vote in France
A French court has ordered electoral officials to restore a British woman's pre-Brexit right to vote in local elections, triggering calls for a renewed push for a bilateral treaty on electoral enfranchisement in each others countries. Alice Bouilliez, a former British civil servant, who has lived in France for 38 years, said she was 'extremely surprised' but delighted that the Auch court in south-western France had ordered that the authorities put her name back on the electoral register for local elections 'I am extremely happy about the result. When I went to get the ruling from the court I was extremely surprised because I was expecting a knock on the knuckles,' she said. Bouilliez first mounted legal action against the disenfranchisement in 2020 with a case going all the way to the European court of justice, which ruled against her in 2022. The court followed the advice of advocate general Anthony Collins who said the EU treaty had made 'nationality of a member state' an 'essential condition of a person to be able to acquire and retain the status of citizens of the Union and to benefit fully from the rights attaching to that status'. Fouchet said the court did not determine conclusively what happened to those acquired rights British citizens such as Bouilliez had received when she became a permanent resident of France under the free movement rules that were available to Britons before Brexit. The ruling by the Auch tribunal judiciary could now be used to restore rights across France for British citizens living in France before Brexit who did not opt to apply for French citizenship and wanted to win back their right to vote, he said. 'The court ruled that Alice had not committed any crime and that to lose her voting rights was a fundamental and disproportionate infringement of her voting rights,' he said. 'The right to vote is a common good, it is more than just a right,' he said. Though married to a French citizen, Bouilliez never sought citizenship, partly as she made an oath to the British crown when she worked for the Foreign Office. Before Brexit, British citizens living in France had the right to vote in municipal and European parliamentary elections but not legislative elections for the national government or presidency. In a mirror situation, EU citizens including French people living permanently in the UK had the right to vote in local and European elections but not national, with the exception of citizens of Ireland, Cyprus and Malta who can vote in all elections in the UK. The UK had wanted to make reciprocal voting rights part of Brexit deal but the EU did not agree. leaving the UK to negotiate bilateral treaties. So far just five countries, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Poland and Luxembourg have agreed that each others citizens could continue to have rights in local elections, but there is no such treaty with France. Fouchet called on the French and British governments, who are now benefiting from the reset in the overall EU-UK relationship to open negotiations to restore citizens voting rights. 'The French and UK government should have a bilateral treaty reciprocating the right to vote in municipal elections. I see this judgment as an opportunity, especially in light of the recent UK-EU summit, to get an agreement on this,' he said. The UK government has been approached for comment.
Telegraph
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
I faced a hostile mob and lost multiple friends when I changed my mind on trans rights
I am a human rights lawyer and professor at King's College London. Until 2018, I supported all the demands of the transgender-rights movement. But since then, I have changed my mind. Why? Because I finally understood that some demands conflict with the rights of women and are therefore unreasonable. I first encountered transgender rights as a University of Oxford PhD student, researching the human rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals and same-sex couples. The claims of transsexual persons, as they were then known, seemed different to me. I did not understand them, so I was reluctant to comment on them. And when, in the 2002 Christine Goodwin case (Goodwin said that she had faced sexual harassment at work following gender-affirming surgery), the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the UK must amend the sex on the birth certificates of 'post-operative transsexuals' to reflect their 'new sexual identity', I thought that this must be progress. At last, the UK would have to catch up with other European countries. Two years later, when the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 went well beyond that ruling, by not requiring any surgery or other medical treatment (a person with a beard and male genitals could become legally female), it struck me as very generous but I did not question it. I assumed that whatever the transgender community demanded must be reasonable. They knew what they needed. It did not occur to me, as a man, to put myself in the shoes of a woman, encountering a 'legal woman' with male genitals in a women-only space. As such, when I joined a group of experts in Indonesia to draft the 2007 Yogyakarta Principles, widely cited as 'best practice' on sexual orientation and gender identity, I did not question the proposals of the transgender experts. Everything changed in 2018. My lightbulb moment came at a university summer school. I was asked to explain the 'spousal veto' under UK law: a wife must consent, if her husband wishes to change his legal sex to female and in turn make their opposite-sex marriage into a same-sex marriage. I said that the husband's human right to change his legal sex could be limited to respect 'the rights of others' (the wife's right not to be in a same-sex marriage against her will). A transgender student could not understand how I could compare the husband's 'fundamental human right' with the wife's right under 'a contract' (their marriage). Feeling frustrated, I said: 'Trans rights don't trump everything else!' The transgender student became angry and stormed out of the classroom. Finally, it dawned on me that some members of the transgender-rights movement did not seem to understand that women have human rights too. Over the next two years, I began to speak with women about their concerns about some transgender demands. One woman asked if I had read Principle 31 of the 2017 Yogyakarta Principles (in which I did not participate). I had not done so and was shocked when I read it. It boldly claimed that every country in the world must remove sex from birth certificates and, until then, allow change of legal sex based on self-identification (without a diagnosis of gender dysphoria). In 2021, I publicly changed my position. On April 1 of that year, in an interview published in The Critic, I criticised Principle 31 and suggested for the first time that allowing change of legal sex might not be necessary to protect the rights of transgender people. Fifteen days later, citing the interview, an LGBT organisation terminated its relationship with me, after more than twenty years. To an LGBT-rights activist I had known for just as long, I wrote: 'I hope that we can still be friends!' He replied that he wanted 'to take a break for a bit' (now four years and counting). A month later, I became a trustee of the charity LGB Alliance (founded in 2019 after Stonewall began to prioritise transgender issues) and went on to speak at its first annual conference. In that speech, I focused on the legal changes I had witnessed since 2002 and linked the political tensions surrounding transgender rights to an 'abuse of sympathy', which had in turn led to an 'escalation of demands'. I charted how we had shifted from change of legal sex after surgery, to change of legal sex without medical treatment but with safeguards (a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and a two-year waiting period), to change of legal sex based on self-identification (with no safeguards) and finally to removing sex from birth certificates (meaning that there is no legal sex to change). These were ideas I carried forwards to a staff research seminar at King's in November of 2021 – albeit not without controversy. The Dean of the School of Law rejected calls to cancel the event and showed his support for freedom of expression by attending. Three security guards were posted outside the room (a first in my thirty years at the university), but no protesters appeared. Two years later, in January 2023, I was scheduled to give the same talk at Montréal's McGill University Faculty of Law (where I had studied). But this time I faced a hostile mob of between 100-200 students. They chanted 'shame on you' and 'F**k your system. F**k your hate. Trans rights aren't up for debate'. At one point, I thought that they were going to smash the glass door to the seminar room. Instead, they forced it open, stopped me from speaking, and threw flour on me. All of which has informed my book, Transgender Rights vs Women's Rights, in which I reach conclusions that will shock many supporters of the transgender-rights movement. In writing it, I realised that I had been wrong to assume, for many years, that anything the movement proposed must be reasonable. The escalation of demands I belatedly noticed made me go back to the start and ask myself: was change of legal sex ever justifiable? I concluded that it was not, and that Sweden made a mistake in 1972 when it became the first country in Europe to allow the practice. That mistake has of course been replicated by many other European nations since. Countries that have yet to follow suit (nearly 60 per cent of the 193 United Nations member states) are right to hold out. There is no human right to documents that are biologically false. An individual's birth sex never changes, regardless of any medical treatment they receive. But transgender people had in 1972, and have today, a human right to legal protection against all forms of violence, harassment or discrimination. That was the judgment Sweden should have reached in 1972, and everyone else since. Taking a stand has not been without cost. Since I 'came out' as 'gender-critical' four years ago, a number of friends have stopped speaking to me, and this year I was dropped from a university's summer programme. But I am proud to have made this journey, and of finally speaking out for the rights of women.
The Guardian
25-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Council of Europe chief warns against politicising court of human rights
Europe's leading human rights body has criticised nine governments that have urged a rethink of the interpretation of the European convention on human rights on migration issues. The Council of Europe secretary general, Alain Berset, spoke out against 'politicising' the European court of human rights after nine European leaders signed a letter organised by Italy's Giorgia Meloni and Denmark's Mette Frederiksen, calling for an 'open-minded conversation' about the interpretation of the convention. The nine signatories, who also included the leaders of Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, said governments needed more room to decide on when to expel foreign criminals and keep track of them when they cannot be deported, as well as to counter foreign states seeking to destabilise countries by sending migrants to their borders. 'What was once right might not be the answer of tomorrow,' the letter states. Speaking alongside Frederiksen in Rome last week, Meloni said the main problem was that countries could not expel 'immigrant citizens who had committed serious crimes'. In a response on Saturday, Berset, a former Swiss government minister, challenged the governments that had questioned the convention's application. 'Debate is healthy but politicising the court is not,' he wrote in a statement. 'In a society governed by the rule of law, no judiciary should face political pressure. Institutions that protect fundamental rights cannot bend to political cycles. If they do, we risk eroding the very stability they were built to ensure.' He said the European court of human rights was the only international court adjudicating violations of human rights in the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. 'This should never be undermined,' he said. The Council of Europe, which was formed in 1949 in the period of postwar reconciliation, and which is separate to the EU, has 46 member countries that have signed the European convention on human rights. The European court of human rights, based in Strasbourg, determines whether governments are living up to their obligations under the convention. The court has ruled against Italy in a handful of migration cases, including a 2016 case where Tunisians fleeing their country in the wake of the Arab spring were held at a detention centre on Lampedusa before being removed to their home country. The court has ruled against Denmark over the issue of family reunification, such as in a 2021 case where Danish authorities were found to have denied a Syrian refugee his right to a family life by refusing his wife permission to join him. More than 30 cases are pending at the court against Latvia, Lithuania and Poland after allegations of pushbacks into Belarus to prevent people from claiming asylum in these countries. For instance, the court is hearing from 26 Iraqi nationals of Kurdish origin who allege that Latvian authorities forced them back into Belarus without hearing their asylum claims. The people, who have nearly all been sent back to Iraq, also say they were denied access to food, shelter or water while stranded in the forest on the Latvian-Belarusian border. The Baltic states and Poland accuse Belarus of weaponising migrants by luring people from the Middle East and Africa to the border region in an attempt to destabilise the EU. They say they are facing 'hybrid warfare' and that stability of their societies needs greater priority. Sign up to This is Europe The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment after newsletter promotion The governments behind the letter have been behind similar initiatives to toughen EU migration policy. Last October Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands organised an informal meeting of 11 countries that resulted in an EU-wide endorsement of return hubs – offshore centres for processing the returns of migrants denied asylum in the bloc. So far no European country has succeeded in setting up a return hub and it remains unclear which countries might host the facilities. In 2022 the then Conservative-led British government criticised the convention after the Strasbourg court ruled against its flagship plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, meaning an inaugural flight to the east African country was abandoned at the last minute. Last year Boris Johnson, who had been prime minister at the time of the ruling, called for a referendum on the UK's membership of the convention when he was promoting his memoir.
