Following a recent European court ruling over Hungary’s alleged discrimination against LGBTQ people, activists and European officials have called for a ban on gay and transgender conversion practices.
Members of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) said it was not enough to leave the issue up to individual nations, describing conversion practices as “hate crimes”.
“The EESC demands a ban on conversion practices and calls for them to be classified as hate crimes”, said committee member Pascal Debay. He also proposed an “awareness and education campaign” to support victims and provide protection to union citizens “affected by these acts, which violate human dignity”.
Debay’s comments followed the committee’s plenary meeting on 29 April, at which the EESC adopted opinions calling for stronger enforcement of the EU’s LGBTIQ+ Equality Strategy 2026–2030 and a “comprehensive EU-wide ban on conversion practices”.
The committee’s document describes conversion practices as interventions “aimed at changing, suppressing or erasing a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression”. The same day, 405 out of 630 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) voted in favor of a legal act establishing a ban on the practices in all member states.
European Commission Declines EU-Wide Conversion Ban
However, the European Commission (EC) has said it will not pursue an EU-wide law, instead encouraging individual members to enact their own laws through a non-binding mechanism.
Conversion practices “have no place in our union”, said EC President Ursula von der Leyen on 12 May.
The commission’s proposal received a mixed response from proponents of the ban. The Renew Europe parliamentary grouping posted on X: “We need real action, not just empty words. Being LGBTIQ+ is not a health problem that can be ‘cured’... EU must lead. Member States must act.”
ILGA-Europe, the European region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, welcomed the EC’s commitment, saying it marked a “decisive step forward”.
“Ending conversion practices cannot be reduced to symbolism or fragmented national action”, a spokesperson said in a 14 May statement. “It requires clear EU-wide direction, which the commission commits to today.”
Bans Make Medical Practices "Legally Risky"
Medical practitioners have spoken out against bans, saying they make it “legally risky” to try to “talk a kid out of their wrong-body distress”.
“At the very least, it makes doctors scared to try it”, Róisín Michauxa, a former contractor for the EC who says she was sacked for opposing transgender ideology, wrote on Substack on 18 May. Her comments followed an interview with a pediatric psychiatrist in Belgium who is facing a criminal investigation under the country’s conversion therapy laws.
“Conversion therapy bans are about coercion, because transgender wrongbodyism does not have popular support”, wrote Michaux. “Making non-compliance illegal is how its advocates get around the unpopularity problem.”
Meanwhile, critics have warned that moves to ban conversion therapies are based on “flawed data” that conflate abuse with reasonable disagreement over a person’s gender identity.
The Problem of “Affirmative” Treatment for Minors
In Germany, too, major medical associations have sharply criticized legislation surrounding the conversion therapy ban, particularly because the treatment of transgender patients was also incorporated into the legal prohibition.
As a result, doctors in Germany now find themselves operating in a legal grey zone when working with underage patients seeking gender transition treatment.
At present, adolescent transgender patients in Germany may therapeutically be treated only in an “affirmative” manner, meaning therapists are expected solely to support and accompany a minor’s expressed wish to change gender. They are no longer permitted to question the seriousness or underlying causes of that desire.
Renowned child psychiatrist Professor Alexander Korte has warned that this makes adequate therapeutic treatment effectively impossible. According to Korte, the wish for gender transition may also reflect other underlying psychological conditions, including autism, depression or trauma. He argues that the purely validating approach of “affirmative therapy” risks overlooking such deeper causes while instead offering what appears to be a simple solution.
Korte specifically questions the new treatment guidelines for the German-speaking world, which were drafted by 27 medical associations. They provide exclusively for so-called trans-affirmative therapy in the treatment of gender dysphoria among minors, an approach internationally associated with the so-called Dutch protocol.
In practice, trans-affirmative treatment means that a child’s or adolescent’s newly declared gender identity should be therapeutically, medically and eventually surgically affirmed. A number of prominent youth psychiatrists in Germany, as well as the Swiss Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, have meanwhile sharply criticized the guidelines. The central point of criticism remains the premature use of puberty blockers in minors.
Different Definitions of Conversion Practices
Earlier this year, conservative think tank MCC Brussels criticized presentations on conversion practices in Europe by the ILGA, describing them as “disingenuous, misleading and politically motivated”. ILGA Europe had “deliberately” presented “flawed data” and “lumped together a whole range of behaviors under the banner of ‘conversion practices’” to create the image of a continent-wide crisis, said MCC Brussels in February.
“Campaigners encourage the public to imagine a coordinated network attempting to ‘convert’ LGBTIQ youth”, a spokesperson said in a statement. “In reality, the data suggests that insults, family conflict, uncertainty, and cautious professional engagement are being retrospectively redefined as a single, malevolent practice.”
EU Accuses Hungary of LGBTQ Discrimination
The calls come against the backdrop of a European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling against Hungary over its restrictions on the presentation of non-heterosexual lifestyles and gender issues to minors, particularly in schools.
Participants in the EESC’s April plenary said the ECJ’s judgement “reinforced the Union’s legal obligation to protect equality and human dignity” and underlined “the central role of EU‑level action in safeguarding LGBTIQ+ rights” across all member states.
The EU court found that Hungarian restrictions on the presentation of non-heterosexual lifestyles and gender issues to minors amounted to discrimination.
The government said the aim was to protect children at a sensitive age by limiting the teaching of LGBTQ topics in schools and preventing minors from being exposed to sexual content. Viktor Orban received strong public backing for the measures. However, after the EC classified the policy as discriminatory, judges found that the law was disproportionate and “stigmatizing”.
