EU Enlargement and Gay Politics: The Impact of Eastern Enlargement on Right, Activism and Prejudice

Over the last decade, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and their rights have become an ever more salient and controversial part of the EU enlargement process. Indeed, protection of LGBT rights and pride, in particular, have been used by EU actors to gauge the ‘Europeanness' of candidate countries. Thus, in order to understand how the EU accession process has contributed to LGBT politics in (potential) new member states, we need disentangle the symbolism from the actual advances on the ground and to determine more exactly the influence of the EU on LGBT rights in former or current ‘enlargement countries.' In particular, we asked the following question: What is the impact of the EU enlargement on the political and legal contexts in which these LGBT people live and claim rights? Our findings demonstrate that although the EU accession process can indeed shape the domestic political field in which LGBT activists manoeuvre, LGBT politics never really Europeanized, i.e. advantages and backlashes in and against LGBT rights remain predominantly shaped by domestic political calculations. Additionally, by drawing attention to the unintended consequences of the symbolism of LGBT rights in European politics, we hope to move away from an overreliance on EU-centric frames on the study of EU Enlargement and LGBT politics without discarding the opportunity structure created by the EU accession process.