Text tabled : RC-B6-0025/2006

  Marie-Arlette Carlotti (PSE), in writing. – (FR) European countries seem to be victims of an infectious homophobia that is cause for concern.

It is a homophobia all the more shocking because people no longer appear to have any hang-ups about it and because it is everywhere rife, expressed in verbal or physical violence, the persistence of discrimination and the introduction of new legislation (for example, the Latvian Parliament has tabled an amendment to the Latvian Constitution to prohibit marriages between persons of the same sex).

Whether in disguise or taken for granted, homophobia has no place in the European Union.

Non-discrimination is guaranteed in the texts (the Treaties, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights).

It ought to be so in actual practice.

Moreover, it is very much to the credit of this European Parliament always to have been in the vanguard of this fight. It has committed itself to promoting people’s rights and lessening discrimination (February 1994, September 1996, July 2001 and June 2005).

It must do so again today.

That is the ambition behind this resolution, which is unambiguous in condemning discrimination in all its forms. It relies on the will to bring about change, demanding that the arsenal of anti-discrimination measures be supplemented on the basis of Article 13 of the Treaty and that a communication be issued on the obstacles to the freedom of movement of homosexual couples whose partnerships are legally recognised in the EU.

It is a clear and necessary political signal. I shall vote in favour of it with determination and conviction.