Words and Deeds: The von der Leyen Commission’s Defence of Equality as an EU Value in Times of Opposition

In the last fifteen years, the European Union (EU) has witnessed the exponential increase in opposition against gender equality and LGBT rights, both at the national and at the supranational level of the EU. However, EU institutions have only recently started to regard such opposition as a threat and to respond accordingly. The European Commission under President von der Leyen has taken unprecedented action in this regard. Indeed, the Commission has gone from a timid response before 2019, to the arduous defence of gender equality and especially LGBT rights under von der Leyen, using all the tools at its disposal: discourse, institutional structuring, policies, and legal action, thus matching words and deeds. The puzzle this paper addresses is, why now? Why has the Commission started to actively respond to rising opposition against gender equality and LGBT rights in the EU only after 2019? And why has it done so on the basis of the value of equality? Drawing on the literature on opposition against gender and LGBT equality and conducting a qualitative content analysis of policy documents, we argue that the Commission’s response to such opposition constitutes a defence of equality as a fundamental EU value, and thus a source of the EU’s normative foundations and legitimacy. This is determined both by von der Leyen’s gender equality record and by the specific context her Commission faces, in which the project of European integration is not just being undermined by the poly-crises it is confronting, but actively and directly attacked.