NELFA in panel discussion ‘Rainbow Families with(out) borders’, organised by Ulrike Lunacek, Member of the European Parliament
The Network of European LGBTI Families Associations (NELFA) was represented by its President, Maria Von Känel, in the panel discussion ‘Rainbow Families with(out) borders’, organised in Vienna, Austria on 29 January 2016, by Ulrike Lunacek, Member of the European Parliament (The Greens).
During the conference, NELFA highlighted in particular the plight of LGBTI parents and their families in Poland and Croatia, underlining the urgent need of action to protect rainbow families in these two countries.
NELFA welcomes the initiative of the European Commission to improve the situation of LGBTI people in Europe and looks forward to working on the list of actions put forward by the European Commission in this respect, in particular as regards the situation of rainbow families (http://ec.europa.eu/justice/discrimination/files/lgbti_actionlist_en.pdf).
NELFA will work together with its member organisations, as well as other family and human rights organisations, to collect and deliver life stories illustrating the concrete obstacles faced by rainbow families when moving across borders inside the European Union.
At the conference, Maria von Känel made the following statement: “Freedom of movement for its citizens is one of the cornerstones of the European Union. Our families deserve the same rights as everybody else. Our children in particular, deserve the same level of legal protection of every other child in the European Union. We want European institutions to work together towards making freedom of movement a reality for our families. We should not loose our parenting rights when crossing borders. This is creating a new kind of exclusion for our children and NELFA finds that unacceptable”.