Production: By Europod, in co-production with Sphera Network.
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You can find the transcript here if you prefer reading:
Only eight European countries have banned conversion practices.
These so-called therapies often lead to PTSD, but they can go as far as driving young people to suicide.
This is why more than one million citizens are asking the EU to ban these practices.
Is there hope that the EU will do it?
“I was isolated, forbidden to speak, subjected to deprivation and forced into intrusive and abusive one-to-one sessions.”
"In those sessions, homosexuality was portrayed as depravity, something dirty and dangerous. It was told that being gay would lead me to loneliness, hell, HIV or to death"
"I was young and terrified; I thought my life would be over. I learnt to hate myself, and very quickly, since none of my feelings were changing, I became desperate and started having thoughts of ending my life.”
This is the testimony of Benoît Berthe Siward, who endured conversion practices, pictured as religious retreats, that actually aimed at changing his sexual orientation.
“Trust me, my story is far from being the most violent. Many survivors in our collective endured much worse things, such as exorcism, physical abuse, public shaming, corrective rape, and many other things"
"Some of them describe their lives as totally ruined, and too many are still unable to speak publicly today.“
Benoît Berthe Siward offered his testimony during a debate in the European Parliament a few weeks ago. He is a member of the French collective “nothing to heal”, which fights against conversion practices.
About 1 quarter of LGBTQ people have been subjected to forms of this, sometimes called therapy, in the EU.
Data from the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights show that, in Greece, for example, more than one third of LGBTQ people admit having been dragged into some form of conversion practice.
Which is why a group of activists started a European citizen initiative aiming at banning conversion practices across the EU.
The call gathered 1,25 million signatures and has therefore been submitted to the European Commission for consideration.
The initiative was well received in the European Parliament, which held a debate about it last Wednesday. Except in the ranks of the extreme right groups. Conservative and nationalist MEPs are questioning the extent of such a ban. According to them, it could interfere with religious freedom.
So does the EU actually have the competence and power to ban conversion practices?
Well, the EU has limited competence when it comes to health issues. But it does have the power to forbid practices that violate fundamental rights.
How would that work?
One option would be to qualify conversion practices as a “eurocrime”. The EU would then be able to set minimum sanctions for any such practice across the EU. This is the case for terrorism, or trafficking in human beings, for instance.
However, doing so needs the unanimous consent of EU Member states. And a country like Hungary would never agree to it.
Proof of this: The commission proposed to include hate speech in the list of eurocrimes in 2022, but Budapest has been blocking the decision since then, in the name of freedom of expression.
As an alternative way, the authors of the citizen initiative are calling for a revision of the equality directive from 2008 to include a ban on these practices.
But this text was actually never adopted, again, because of a lack of consensus among Member States.
Now, even if all 27 EU member states decided to ban conversion practices, they would need to agree on a common definition.
And this would lead to never ending negotiations.
First, because there is a whole group of Member states which are dedicated to protecting their Christian circles, but also because conversion practices can take many forms, which makes it hard to get rid of them completely.
EU commissionner for equality Hadja Lahbib acknowledged that conversion practices should not exist.
Now the Commission has to respond before mid-May to the citizen initiative.
Outside purely legal tools, and because it seems the only way forward, at least for now, the commission could also adopt a resolution calling for a widespread ban. This would at least send a clear message to member states, that they should not tolerate such practices.
In the same spirit, the EU could make sure there are mechanisms of compensation available to victims.
