EU: A true ally in promoting a culture of diversity?

Friday, Jun 27, 2025

OBCT

LGBT+ rights across Europe show division; civil society questions EU’s role amid political tensions and discrimination.

🔗 Read the article on balcanicaucaso.org

[This is an automatically generated summary, for reference only]

LGBTQIA+ pride events are taking place across Europe, but the landscape is divided by national government bans and ambiguous support from European institutions. ILGA Europe’s “Rainbow Map” assesses LGBTQ+ rights across 49 European countries using 76 indicators across seven themes, showing significant disparities, with Malta scoring highest and Russia lowest. The division between Western and Eastern Europe remains evident, mirroring the Iron Curtain’s legacy. Political tensions are highlighted by differing stances from the European Commission regarding Pride events in Hungary versus Brussels. Activists perceive EU institutions as sometimes supportive but often distant or merely performative (“pink washing”). Experts suggest that while EU policies offer legislative progress, their real effectiveness varies greatly by country. To overcome hostility, activists agree that education (in schools and families), increased media visibility beyond Pride month, and strong political leadership are crucial, with online hate speech identified as a major obstacle.

🔗 Read the original article

Previous page Unaccompanied minors: a lottery of care placements and a difficult path to adulthood
Next page From Iran to Białowieża: How this Polish forest became a deadly trap

© 2026 Pulse - Europe beyond the beat


PULSE is an initiative for cross-border collaborative journalism in Europe co-funded by the European Commission under Grant Agreement n. PO 4500158093.

PULSE is an initiative coordinated by OBCT that has been promoting intensive journalistic cross-border collaborations in Europe since 2024. Its main aim is to help strengthen the European public sphere by reporting on and telling stories from new and diverse perspectives.

At the heart of PULSE are 10 leading national news outlets (Delfi – Lithuania, Deník Referendum – Czechia, Der Standard – Austria, EfSyn – Greece, El Confidencial – Spain, Gazeta Wyborcza – Poland, HotNews – Romania, HVG – Hungary, Il Sole 24 Ore – Italy, Mediapool – Bulgaria) and three transnational organisations, including OBCT , n-ost and Voxeurop .

Additional outlets and journalists are involved as associate partners, including EUobserver , Føljeton (Denmark), H-Alter (Croatia), Levila (Estonia), Rubryka (Ukraine), and The Journal Investigates (Ireland).

PULSE is driven by a sort of virtual transnational newsroom made up of journalists from all the publications involved. It collaboratively produces new journalistic content on European issues on a daily basis, coming in many different languages. The editorial output amounts to over a thousand publications per year, mostly in article form.

PULSE also runs 4 thematic networks open to any European journalist interested in crucial issues such as EU enlargement, relations between the EU and other global powers, the EU’s green transition, or media and the information society. These networks function as online communities and periodically publish calls for pitches.