NEW TENDENCIES REGARDING SAME-SEX MARRIAGE IN THE MEMBER STATES OF THE EUROPEAN UNION: A brief inside and outside perspective
NEW TENDENCIES REGARDING SAME-SEX MARRIAGE IN THE MEMBER STATES OF THE EUROPEAN UNION: A brief inside and outside perspective

Summary/Abstract: Sexual orientation discrimination has been recently outlined within the Plenary Session of the European Parliament that took place in Brussels, on 24th May 2012 as a priority in the fight against discrimination of all kind, making a “call on EU member states to consider giving access to cohabitation, registered partnerships or marriage to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people”. Taking this statement as a starting point, this paper aims first to briefly analyse the European Union’s legislation defending sexual orientation discrimination and its limits. After that, a comparison between the Spanish and Romanian legislations will be made, choosing thus two countries within the EU that have very different paths and views in this matter, finally assessing the recent Tribunal Constitucional judgment regarding the constitutionality of same-sex marriage. In the same line our analysis will also focus on giving an overview of the EU panorama focusing on those countries that have extreme and opposite views about the matter. This study would not be complete without taking into account the contrary situation that is taking place in certain non-Member States of EU such as: Ukraine, Russia or Moldova. This fact was also highlighted by the European Parliament in the last Plenary Session saying that “in the European Union [and in other European states, referring to the recent situations occurred in Ukraine, Russian Federation or Moldova], the fundamental rights of LGBT people are not yet fully upheld”.

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