A Milestone for Equality — Calling for Concrete Delivery for Children and Youth, Including Those who Are Trans, Intersex and Racialised
Brussels, 8 October 2025
“Europe without LGBTQI people would not be Europe,” said EU Commissioner for Equality Hadja Lahbib at today’s launch of the new EU Equality Strategy 2026–2030. “In recent years, we have fought hard for the freedom of LGBTQI people; now we are going further to build a Union that is more just, more equal, and more free for all.” The Commissioner expressed hope that the Strategy will send a strong signal to Member States and renew the Union’s commitment to act as a beacon of hope amid the current backlash on LGBTQI rights across Europe.
IGLYO — the International LGBTQI Youth & Student Organisation welcomes and thanks the European Commission for this milestone Strategy. It clearly reaffirms the Commission’s commitment to advancing LGBTQI equality and protecting our communities from violence and discrimination. This is especially critical for LGBTQI children and young people, who face disproportionately high levels of bullying, harassment, and exclusion — online and offline — and are increasingly targeted by anti-LGBTQI rhetoric and legislation.
While we are deeply concerned that education and protection of LGBTQI children and youth from violence are being singled out in some Member States, today’s Strategy is a vital counterweight to safeguard inclusive schools and learning environments. We commend the Commission for implementing a transparent consultative process to design this Strategy. However, the current Strategy lacks the clarity required to ensure that the EU genuinely protects and advances the rights of all LGBTQI people — especially children and youth. We are, in any case, glad to see that many of the recommendations and priorities IGLYO and other civil society organisations put forward were taken into account (see ours here), especially those pertaining to LGBTQI children and youth.
Important Elements of the Strategy for LGBTQI Children and Youth
- Serious investment in civil society. In a climate where funding has been squeezed in several countries, we are encouraged by the Commission’s pledge to continue supporting LGBTQI organisations, including through the next MFF and AgoraEU — with a proposed €3.6 billion for the new Citizens, Equality, Rights & Values+ strand. This is a powerful, concrete commitment to the groups doing the work on the ground.
- Renewed push for the Equal Treatment Directive. We applaud the promise to support Council Presidencies and Member States by all possible means to secure unanimous agreement. This is a much-needed and long-awaited step toward comprehensive protection from discrimination, and we are happy to see the Commission is not withdrawing its commitment to equality in this sense.
- Tackling harmful practices. One of the key actions highlighted in the Strategy, as announced by Commissioner Lahbib, is the commitment to combat harmful practices. In this context, this refers to tackling conversion practices, banning intersex genital mutilation, and ending the forced medicalisation of trans people. While the Strategy fails to include concrete actions to promote legal gender recognition based on self-determination or to explicitly ban intersex genital mutilation, we welcome the Commission’s intention to address conversion practices through a dedicated study and structured dialogue. We urge that these discussions meaningfully consider the realities of trans and intersex children and youth, who are among the most affected by such harmful practices, and that any measures adopted ensure their protection and well-being.
- Action on cyberbullying and online violence. LGBTQI young people experience high rates of school bullying and harassment, also online. We support the forthcoming EU Action Plan on Cyberbullying and an EU-wide inquiry into social media’s impacts on young people — including those from LGBTQI communities. We’ve been working to provide concrete feedback to this initiative, and we hope to collaborate with the Commission in its implementation and see the inclusion of LGBTQI youth civil society organisations.
- Inclusive education in the European Education Area. We appreciate the productive cooperation during this mandate in the Working Group on Equality, Values & Education, and welcome ongoing best-practice exchanges on safe and inclusive schooling and look forward to clarity on the new working groups’ composition and the meaningful inclusion of LGBTQI youth organisations on them. We are pleased to see that the Commission wishes to continue supporting this work.
- A new LGBTQI Policy Forum. We welcome a structured platform bringing together civil society, social partners, and academia to address emerging challenges and track delivery. We look forward to details on how it will complement existing groups and to regular roundtables with European LGBTQI umbrella organisations, including youth-led groups.
- Deepened youth engagement. We value the EU Youth Stakeholders Group’s meaningful involvement of LGBTQI young people and look forward to continuing — and strengthening — our participation.
- Protecting children from sexual abuse. We also welcome the fact that the Commission wants to support co-legislators in adopting the two legislative proposals to combat and prevent child sexual abuse and sexual exploitation.
- Child-protection systems and participation. Alignment with the EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child, the EU Network for Children’s Rights, and the 2024 Recommendation on integrated child-protection systems is promising. We hope over the next months, the Commission will provide clarity on how LGBTQI children will be represented in the EU Children’s Participation Platform, particularly where speaking as LGBTQI minors is restricted. IGLYO stands ready to help, linking the Commission with our member organisations to ensure safe, meaningful participation.
- National action plans, health equality & countering hate speech. We support the call for all Member States to adopt LGBTQI Equality Action Plans by 2027 and to appoint national coordinators. These plans must be explicitly child- and youth-inclusive, reflecting the higher rates of violence and harassment faced by LGBTQI young people. We likewise welcome efforts to promote health equality and to monitor and counter illegal hate speech online with a dedicated knowledge hub, where equally we would like to see how these measures take into account the specific needs of children and youth.
- Better equality data—including for youth. We support a forthcoming Recommendation on equality data and the 2027 Eurobarometer on discrimination, alongside the next FRA LGBTI survey. We urge robust guidance for collecting data for under-18s (with strong ethics and safeguarding) and disaggregating youth data wherever possible to inform targeted policies.
- Lack of Intersectional Commitments. The Strategy does not sufficiently address how multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination — such as those based on race, disability, migration status, or socio-economic background — shape the lived realities of LGBTQI children and youth. A truly inclusive equality framework must embed intersectionality as a core principle across all actions and monitoring mechanisms. While it is mentioned at the beginning of the strategy, it is not clear how this will be implemented across actions.
- Weak Accountability and Monitoring Framework. As also mentioned by ILGA-Europe, the absence of clear benchmarks, timelines, and transparent reporting mechanisms raises serious concerns about the Strategy’s ability to deliver measurable progress. Without defined indicators and regular evaluation, commitments risk remaining rhetorical rather than actionable.
Trans, Intersex & Racialised Children and Youth Inclusion — From Recognition to Delivery
The Strategy rightly notes the disproportionate violence, harassment and discrimination faced by trans, intersex and racialised people, which is even more acute for children and young people. However, it does not yet specify many concrete actions to address these harms.
We also regret that there’s been too little progress in how the new Strategy is more representative of the needs and protective of the rights of trans, gender diverse, and intersex people compared to the previous Strategy, whose scope of action was already too focused on sexual orientation in comparison to gender identity and sex characteristics.
IGLYO urges the Commission to build a delivery track of trans, intersex and racialised children and youth into every strand of implementation, with:
- Clear targets and indicators — disaggregated by age (including under-18s), gender identity and sex characteristics — with rigorous, ethical data safeguards.
- Dedicated funding windows for trans-, intersex- and racialised-led organisations, including youth-led groups, within Citizens, Equality, Rights & Values+ / AgoraEU and related programmes.
- Education measures: teacher training, guidance for safe and inclusive classrooms, protections from bullying, and curricula reflecting trans, intersex and racialised realities.
- Child protection & online safety: tailored risk-mitigation in the child-sexual-abuse files, the cyberbullying plan, and platform accountability initiatives.
- Health & wellbeing actions: tackling barriers to age-appropriate, stigma-free services; evidence-based professional training.
- Legal & policy coherence: monitoring that national action plans include concrete steps on legal recognition, non-discrimination, and hate-crime protection for trans, intersex and racialised people—with youth-specific provisions.
- Participation: ensured seats for trans, intersex and racialised youth in the LGBTQI Policy Forum, the EU Youth Stakeholders Group, the EU Children’s Participation Platform, and relevant working groups.
Embedding these requirements will ensure the Strategy delivers for those most exposed to backlash and that every action reaches trans and intersex children and young people.
Working Hand in Hand to Protect, Empower and Engage
IGLYO is strongly supportive of the Strategy’s recognition of the specific discrimination and violence faced by LGBTQI children and young people, especially trans, intersex and racialised.
As the international LGBTQI youth and student organisation, we stand ready to collaborate with the European Commission throughout 2026–2030 to ensure all actions meaningfully include LGBTQI children and youth. We are eager to help mainstream LGBTQI issues across related initiatives — such as the EU Children’s Participation Platform, the Youth Action Plan, the EU Network for Children’s Rights, and the checklist on the rights of the child, and the upcoming LGBTQI Policy Forum — and to connect the Commission with our network across Europe.
We are glad to see the European Commission is renewing the EU’s commitment to equality. Together, we can build a Union where every child and young person — without exception — can live, learn, and thrive in safety and dignity.
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You can read the full EU Equality Strategy 2026-2030 here, and our Briefing on IGLYO’s Priorities in the Targeted Consultation on the EU LGBTQI Strategy here.
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For more information, contact:
Rú Ávila Rodríguez (they/them)
Deputy Executive Director & Advocacy Manager
ru@iglyo.org