EU States Must Recognise Transgender Identities Across the Bloc, Top Court Rules

European Union countries must recognise gender and name changes made in other member states, the bloc’s top court the European Court of Justice has ruled, dismaying countries pushing back against gender ideology. The Telegraph has the details.

In what was hailed as a “monumental victory” for transgender people, judges in Luxembourg said Romania had broken EU law by refusing to accept a British-Romanian transgender man’s change of sex and name from female to male, which he was granted in the U.K. before the Brexit transition period ended.

In a ruling that sets a precedent across the bloc, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said that lawful name and gender changes made in other EU states had to be automatically accepted to protect EU rights to free movement and residence.

It said that Brexit was not relevant because Britain was still a member state during the transition period, when Arian Mirzarafie-Ahi was granted a gender recognition certificate in 2020, after moving to the U.K. in 2008 and gaining British citizenship.

Mr. Mirzarafie-Ahi had applied for a new birth certificate from the Romanian authorities, who ordered him to restart a lengthy gender-recognition procedure in Romania rather than accepting the U.K. documents.

“Today’s verdict has shown us that trans people are equal citizens of the European Union,” said Iustina Ionescu, Mr. Mirzarafie-Ahi’s lawyer. …

The decision will not be universally welcomed across Europe. EU members Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria have bans or plan to ban people from legally changing their gender.

Rodrigo Ballester, the head of the Centre for European Studies at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium think tank in Budapest, which has links to the Hungarian Government, said: “Utterly shocking and very banal at the same time. Once again, the European Court of Justice tramples over basic legal principles for ideological purposes and erodes member states’ competences through ludicrous reasonings.

“Its ultimate goal is not to enforce the law, but to force further integration. Not to mention that it ignores Brexit as if it had never happened. It is no longer judicial activism, it has become ideological crusading.”

“No individual, nor government, should be forced to affirm something that is untrue. Men cannot become women, and claiming this can have severe consequences in many areas of life,” said Lois McLatchie Miller, a spokeswoman for the Alliance Defending Freedom International campaign group. 

“Every government has a duty to protect the rights of their citizens – be it vulnerable women in crisis rape shelters, in prisons or in changing rooms.

“Granting a biological male access to these spaces by recognising a ‘change in gender’ puts women’s safety and wellbeing in jeopardy and often leads to censored and compelled speech.

“When biology is ignored, and words like ‘sex’ lose their meaning, it is women and girls who bear the brunt of that mistake.”

Worth reading in full.