The article mentions a report on homophobia and sexual orientation discrimination in the EU, published in June 2008, by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency. The report has some surprises (at least to me).
QuoteThirteen EU Member States treat discrimination on grounds of ->-bleeped-<- as a form of sex discrimination (BE, DK, FR, IE, IT, LV300, NL301, AT302, PL, SK303, FI, SE, UK30) although this is generally a matter of practice of the anti-discrimination bodies or courts rather than an explicit stipulation of legislation.
Two or three
may even extend protection to ->-bleeped-<-s or crossdressers.
QuoteIn 11 other Member States, forming a second group, discrimination on grounds of
->-bleeped-<- is treated neither as sex discrimination nor as sexual orientation
discrimination, resulting not only in a situation of legal uncertainty as to the precise
protection of transgender persons from discrimination, but also in a much lower level of
protection of these persons (BG, CZ, EE, EL, CY, LT, LU, MT, PT, RO, SI).
QuoteThere is no uniformity between the Member States as to the coverage, by health care
schemes, of the medical operation leading the gender reassignment. In Italy, once it is
authorised by courts, surgery leading to gender reassignment would be fully reimbursed
by the health services. In many other cases however, the health care system would be
less generous, and the costs of the operation, if not reimbursed or reimbursed only
partially, would represent a substantial obstacle to its availability in practice.
QuoteIn general, as a result of the case-law described above, the EU Member States allow for
the official recognition of the new gender acquired after a gender reassignment
operation, and they may also allow for such recognition in the absence of any medical
procedure; and they allow the transgender person to marry a person of a sex opposite to
the gender he/she has acquired.
There are exceptions, however. In Ireland, there is no provision for transsexual people to
be officially recognised in the gender in which they identify. As a consequence
transsexual people do not have a right to marry in their reassigned gender or to change
their birth certificate or to enjoy any right legally confined to the gender with which they
identify.....It may appear that Luxembourg, too, is in violation of the ECHR in this regard,
since there are no legal provisions specifically addressing the issue of gender reassignment to be
applied by the Luxembourg Civil Status and Population Administration (Etat civil et
population du Luxembourg). A similar lack of legal certainty exists in Latvia....In Malta also, courts
have had to intervene to compensate for the failure of the legislator to allow for the official
recognition of a new gender acquired following treatment
QuoteThe situation in the other EU Member States, whose legal systems are in full conformity
with the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights, can be described
as follows. In four Member States, there is no requirement to undergo hormonal
treatment or surgery of any kind in order to obtain an official recognition of gender
reassignment (ES336, HU, FI337, UK).
QuoteIn other Member States, by contrast, the official recognition of a new
gender is possible only following a medically supervised process of gender
reassignment (BE338, BG, DE, EE, NL339),340 sometimes requiring, as a separate specific
condition, that the person concerned is no longer capable to beget children in
accordance with his/her former sex (BE, DE, NL), and sometimes requiring surgery and
not merely hormonal treatment (IT341, PL).
QuoteUnder the European Convention on Human Rights, a) a transsexual person has the right
to have his/her new gender identity recognised, and b) marriage with a person of the
gender opposite to the gender acquired by the transsexual should be available.
However, it is generally considered that these rules do not imply that full recognition of
the gender reassignment should be possible for a person who is married, since such
recognition would result in a marriage existing between two persons of the same-sex.
QuoteAfter an individual who felt inter- or asexual, neither male nor
female, requested that his sex be crossed out in his birth certificate, the Dutch Supreme
Court dismissed this claim in 2007, ruling that it falls within the margin of appreciation of
national states under Article 8 of the ECHR to require that a person's sex in his/her birth
certificate is either male or female and not gender-neutral.350 This area may have to be
revisited in the future, however.... At yet however, this could not be achieved, partly
because two fundamental institutions of law – marriage and military service – require the
categorisation of people into two genders; additionally, even the Basic Law, in its Article
3 para. 2, 1st sentence, assumes the differentiation of people as males and females.354
QuoteOne specific manifestation of gender identity is in the choice of the forename, where that
name indicates the (male or female) gender of the person. In a minority of Member States,
it is relatively easy to change forenames, including by adoption of a name
identified to the other gender than one's gender or origin, without this being made
conditional upon a medically supervised operation of gender reassignment (BE, DE, IE,
SI, UK).....In most Member States, by contrast, changing names (acquiring a name
indicative of another gender than the gender at birth) is a procedure available only in
exceptional circumstances, generally conditional upon medical testimony that the gender
reassignment has taken place (BG, CZ355, EE356, EL, CY, AT357, PT, SK358, SE), or upon
an official recognition or gender reassignment, whether or not following a medical
procedure (FI).
http://fra.europa.eu/fra/material/pub/comparativestudy/FRA_hdgso_part1_en.pdf
