LGBTI hate crimes in Europe hit record level in 2024

By Paul Tugwell

Governments across Europe and Central Asia increasingly targeted lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people last year as a means of promoting laws that undermine broader civil liberties and democratic values, according to an annual report by a Brussels-based advocacy organization.

This trend, alongside what ILGA-Europe described as the growing normalisation of sexism and hate speech directed at LGBTI people, has driven what it says is an unprecedented surge in violence.

Authorities in Finland, Germany, Norway, and Portugal reported “a significant increase in crimes motivated by perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or gender expression,” ILGA-Europe found. In France, anti-LGBTI offenses rose 13 per cent and, in the Netherlands, they rose 25 per cent. Both tracked 2023, the last year in which data was available.

“What begins as an attack on LGBTI rights rapidly grows into a wider assault on the rights and freedoms of all individuals in society,” ILGA-Europe’s Executive Director Chaber wrote in the flagship report.

More countries are forcing non-governmental organisations to register as “foreign funded” agencies as a first step toward enacting anti-LGBTI laws. That tactic, pioneered by Russia, enables officials to restrict a group’s funding and stifle its activism while casting a shadow over its legitimacy.

These so-called foreign agent laws are often passed alongside “LGBT propaganda laws,” which seek to silence activists, restrict freedom of assembly and criminalise visibility of LGBTI people, according to ILGA-Europe. Countries including European Union members Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia have discussed, proposed or adopted such laws.

“We are entering a new era where LGBTI people have become the testing ground for laws that erode democracy itself,” Chaber wrote.

Schools have been another battleground for legal initiatives against LGBTI people. Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Luxembourg have all introduced laws to ban LGBTI topics from sex education.

Bulgaria implemented one such law in August, and has also prohibited “propaganda, promotion and incitement in any way” of ideas or views “related to non-traditional sexual orientation and/or the determination of gender identity other than biological.”

In Slovakia, Prime Minister Robert Fico plans to amend the country’s constitution to define gender as either male or female, and to limit adoption to heterosexual couples.

Health care is another area under attack, the report found. In the last year, Austria, France, Ireland, Poland have put new measures in place to make it more difficult for minors to access trans-specific health services.

In June, as one of the final measures by the UK’s outgoing Conservative Party before the general election, the Department of Health and Social Care imposed temporary restrictions on prescribing puberty blockers for trans people under 18.

The following month, Health Secretary Wes Streeting, from the Labour Party, defended his decision to extend a ban on puberty blockers despite a backlash from his fellow lawmakers.