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Romania has overtaken Poland as the worst country in the EU for LGBTQ+ people, according to a ranking published by the Brussels-based non-governmental organisation ILGA-Europe.<\/p>\n
Poland had occupied the top spot in the rankings since 2019, which are based on a score that takes into account factors such as the number of hate crimes in a given year and the rights afforded by authorities to the LGBTQ+ community.<\/p>\n
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Based on new data from 2024, Romania has now overtaken Poland, while Malta, Belgium and Iceland find themselves on the opposite side of the spectrum.<\/p>\n
In the past, several Polish political leaders, including the chairman of the Law and Justice (PiS) party Jaroslaw Kaczy\u0144ski, have campaigned against what they call “LGBTQ+ ideology.”<\/p>\n
Asked about the “threat of the imposition of gender and LGBTQ+ ideology on Poland” during a virtual meeting with the editors of the Gazeta Polska newspaper in 2021, Kaczy\u0144ski said that “all this madness- because it really is madness – is happening in a world in which there are tough and strong civilisations, both economically and militarily, which are weakening. This weakening of the West will be taken advantage of.”<\/p>\n
Poland’s lowly ranking changed after the country’s 2023 parliamentary elections, indicating that conditions for LGBTQ+ people have improved. However, the new government has not introduced any new reforms to improve LGBTQ+ rights, despite having promised to do so during the pre-election campaign.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, ILGA-Europe reports that in the “civil society space” category, Poland has seen an improvement, referring to the fact that there were fewer obstacles to “LGBT+ events” such as pride marches.<\/p>\n
“Last year, more than 35 marches were organised across Poland and almost all of them took place peacefully,” reads the latest ILGA-Europe report. “However, the protection of these events is insufficient.”<\/p>\n
Poland recently abolished its last “LGBT-free zone”, six years after the first one was introduced. These zones, although mainly symbolic, were an attempt to exclude the LGBTQ+community from public life, according to activists.<\/p>\n
“LGBT-free zones” have also faced criticism from the European Union. In 2019, the European Parliament voted with a majority of 463 to 107 to condemn the zones, of which there were more than 80 at the time.<\/p>\n
According to an Ipsos+ poll, 67% of Poles support same-sex marriage or legal recognition of unions for LGBTQ+ couples. Although there were two motions in place for the ruling coalition to introduce bills on civil partnerships into parliament, both failed due to a lack of support by more conservative members.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ADVERTISEMENT Romania has overtaken Poland as the worst country in the EU for LGBTQ+ people, according to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187,1699,18794,770,1438],"class_list":{"0":"post-109589","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-european","11":"tag-european-union","12":"tag-lgbt","13":"tag-poland","14":"tag-romania"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114524408164177164","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}