Cyrus Engerer appointed Socialists’ lead negotiator on LGBTIQ resolution

Maltese Member of the European Parliament Cyrus Engerer has been appointed as the Socialists and Democrats’ lead negotiator on an upcoming historic resolution which will declare all of the European Union an LGBTIQ Freedom zone.

The resolution comes following backlash surrounding controversy in over 100 municipalities across Poland, and more recently Hungary, which have declared themselves free from so-called ‘LGBTIQ ideology’ or have adopted ‘Regional Charters of Family Rights’, discriminating in particular against women, single-parents and rainbow families.

“With this resolution the European Parliament sends a clear message. LGBTIQ persons are not an ideology. We are people with fundamental human rights and no one, not even a Member State of the European Union, can take our fundamental human rights away from us,” Engerer said.

The measures in Poland and Hungary call for local governments to refrain from taking any action to encourage tolerance of LGBTIQ people or provide any funding to NGOs working to promote equal rights or anti-discrimination measures education or in any other way supporting LGBTIQ people, he said.

“The discrimination that LGBTIQ persons face in a number of

Member States is not a domestic issue. It is a European issue that goes against the Charter of Fundamental Human Rights, instils fear in a number of people and trumps upon the freedom of movement principle that the European Union is built upon. Diversity and the protection of human rights are core European values,” said Engerer.

“The European Institutions cannot continue to close a blind eye when it comes to the atrocious treatment of LGBTIQ persons by Prime Minister Victor Orban and the Polish PiS Government. The EU must not continue to tolerate these governments’ implementation of their politics of hatred”, said Engerer.

Engerer concluded that it was an honour and a privilege for him to have been handpicked for this historic task, a few months following his election to the European Parliament. “What we did in Malta over the past years now needs to be extended to the rest of the Union and beyond.”