Leading European LGBTQ+ organisations have responded to the European Commission’s newly released EU LGBTQ+ Equality Strategy 2026–2030. While welcoming the Commission’s continued focus on equality, advocacy groups warn that the document fails to match the scale of the challenges currently faced by LGBTQ+ people across Europe.

Unveiling the strategy, Commissioner for Equality Hadja Lahbib said: “In recent years we have fought hard for the freedom of LGBTQ+ people, now we are going further to build a union that is more just, more equal and free for all LGBTQ+ people.” The updated framework extends the Commission’s commitment to tackling discrimination and ensuring equal treatment in employment, education, and public life.

However, ILGA Europe, the EU’s leading LGBTQ+ umbrella organisation, criticised the plan for lacking the ambition and urgency required in the current climate. “The new strategy fails to meet the urgency of the moment and falls short of what is needed to ensure that the EU genuinely protects and advances the fundamental rights of LGBTI people,” the organisation said in a statement.

Rémy Bonny, Executive Director of Forbidden Colours, was direct in describing the Commission’s response as “too little, too late.” Bonny warned that Europe is facing a “coordinated attack from an anti-gender movement” linked to authoritarian influences from outside the EU, particularly from Russia. He pointed to Hungary’s ongoing “Pride ban” in place for over six months as evidence of a deteriorating situation, criticising the Commission for “assessing” rather than acting through legal enforcement.

Civil society groups reiterated three key demands: for the Commission to take legal action against Member States violating EU values systematically; to expand financial conditionalities to all EU funds to ensure compliance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights; and to prioritise LGBTQ+ rights within the expanded AgoraEU programme.

While campaigners welcomed the EU LGBTQ+ equality strategy’s recognition of the right to peaceful assembly, they stressed that only decisive, consistent action will ensure that Europe remains, in Lahbib’s words, “a lighthouse for human rights.”