The European Parliament has adopted a resolution of its Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs welcoming a report published last year by the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) that called for binding EU regulations to force member states to abolish the differences between marriage and same-sex civil unions.
The resolution, authored by Italian Communist MEP, Giusto Catania, was passed by 401 votes to 220, with 67 abstentions.
The FRA report says: “Rights and advantages reserved for married couples should be extended to unmarried same-sex couples either when these couples form a registered partnership in the absence of a possibility to marry, or when, in the absence of a registered partnership, the de facto relationship presents a sufficient degree of permanency in order to ensure equal treatment of LGBT persons”.
The report also called for. the criminalisation of “hate speech” and the creation of mandatory national “equality bodies,” with “quasi-adjudicatory functions” empowered to issue “binding sanctions or orders, subject to review by courts.”
The EU Parliament resolution calls on Member States and EU institutions “to urgently follow the Agency’s recommendations or state their reasons for not doing so”.
Article 76 of the resolution urges the European Commission to force Member States where same-sex marriage is still illegal to recognise the same-sex marriages contracted in EU countries where such marriages are recognised.
The Commission, it says, should remind the principle of mutual recognition for homosexual couples, whether they are married or living in a registered civil partnership, in particular when they are exercising their right to free movement under EU law.
The resolution calls on Member States “to take legislative action to overcome the discrimination experienced by some couples on the grounds of their sexual orientation” and on the Commission to ensure that Member States “grant asylum to persons fleeing from persecution on the grounds of their sexual orientation in their country of origin”.
The resolution also calls upon EU member-states to guarantee access to “sexual and reproductive health and rights,” terms universally accepted as including abortion. The EU supposedly has no competence in the area of family law. However, both the EU Commission and the European Court of Justice use anti-discrimination provisions of EU law to rule on these matters.
