The UK has dropped six places in ILGA-Europe’s Rainbow Map, as Hungary and Georgia also register steep falls following anti-LGBTI legislation. The data highlights how rollbacks on LGBTI human rights are part of a broader erosion of democratic protections across Europe.
Hungary has dropped seven places to 37th on ILGA-Europe’s Rainbow Map with the first Pride ban in the European Union, closely followed by the United Kingdom dropping six places to 22nd after a Supreme Court ruling in its wording defined a woman strictly by ”biological sex”. Georgia has also dropped seven places following a sweeping anti-LGBTI law package that mirrors the Russian anti-democratic playbook.
Part of a broader trend
Hungary’s prohibition of Pride events and criminalisation of participants, the UK Supreme Court’s ruling restricting the legal recognition of trans people, and Georgia’s sweeping ban on all forms of LGBTI representation and assembly are not isolated incidents. They are merely the most striking examples of a broader trend in which LGBTI human rights are being systematically dismantled under the guise of preserving public order. In reality, such measures pave the way for sweeping restrictions on fundamental freedoms, including the rights to protest and to political dissent.
While Pride is being targeted in Hungary to suppress the right to assemble, the Italian government is advancing Bill 1660, which similarly threatens freedom of assembly. The bill proposes harsh penalties, including fines and up to six years’ imprisonment, for protests that block roads, railways, ports or airports. It also allows authorities to pre-emptively ban individuals from public spaces based solely on prior reports or charges, without requiring a conviction. Bulgaria and Slovakia have also regressed, adopting laws that further restrict the rights to assembly, association and expression.
Alongside the UK Supreme Court ruling, Georgia and Hungary have removed references to ‘gender identity and expression’ from their legislation, but the erosion of trans rights extends beyond what can be easily captured by the Rainbow Map. Across Europe, anti-trans measures are being weaponised primarily through healthcare restrictions that are harder to quantify but equally damaging.
Katrin Hugendubel, Advocacy Director, ILGA-Europe said: “Moves in the UK, Hungary, Georgia and beyond signal not just isolated regressions, but a coordinated global backlash aimed at erasing LGBTI rights, cynically framed as the defence of tradition or public stability, but in reality designed to entrench discrimination and suppress dissent.
Katrin added: “The big headlines about the UK and Hungary draw attention, but democracy is being eroded quietly across Europe, like a thousand paper cuts. Centre and far-right actors in the EU are targeting NGO funding to weaken organisations that defend rights, while at the national level we are seeing laws introduced that do not address any genuine societal need but are designed purely to marginalise. Hungary’s constitutional amendment stating that ‘the mother is a woman and the father is a man’ and that ‘gender is defined by birth’ is a clear example.”
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