Europe’s Latest Trans Rights Map Shows Unprecedented Regression

“For the first time in its 13-year history, setbacks in human rights of trans people across Europe and Central Asia now clearly outweigh progress.”

On May 14, Transgender Europe (TGEU) released its annual trans rights map of Europe and Central Asia, highlighting a disturbing trend “The new trans tipping point.”

TGEU, which represents more than 200 member organizations in over 50 countries, has issued its yearly review tracking trans progress in the region for over a decade. But something unprecedented happened this year.

“For the first time in its 13-year history, setbacks in human rights of trans people across Europe and Central Asia now clearly outweigh progress,” a press release by the non-profit reads. “This regression signals more than just a crisis for trans communities—it is a broader crisis of democracy and fundamental rights across the region.”

“This is not merely a cultural rollback but a strategic assault on fundamental freedoms, equality, democracy, and on Europe itself,” the release continues. “Coordinated anti-trans campaigns are converging with broader anti-rights and anti-EU forces, fueled by internal and external actors, from Trump-aligned global networks to the Kremlin. This is a defining moment: the new trans tipping point.”

The first so-called “trans tipping point” was declared in 2014, when Laverne Cox, star of Orange is the New Black, graced the cover of Time.

“Almost one year after the Supreme Court ruled that Americans were free to marry the person they loved, no matter their sex, another civil rights movement is poised to challenge long-held cultural norms and beliefs,” reporter Katy Steinmetz wrote. She concluded that, while trans rights still had a long way to go, “awareness” was “creating new possibilities.”

Now, TGEU found, the scales have been tipped in the opposite direction on a global scale.

“Despite the unmistakable deterioration of the situation for trans people, many political leaders halt progress and recoil from solidarity action—as if this could stop the attack” on trans rights and other fundamental liberties, said TGEU Executive Director Ymania Brown in the release.

Countries like Georgia and Hungary, for example, advanced constitutional amendments to ban various rights for the trans community—from legal recognition of their gender, to health care, to the freedom of assembly. And in April, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom functionally ruled that trans people don’t have equal rights.

There have, however, been some human rights victories for trans people. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), has repeatedly affirmed that trans people are protected under EU law, ruling in favor of gender recognition in Romania as well as France. But the CJEU is under attack by right-wing forces, too.

TGEU’s updated index also demonstrated a thriving anti-trans ecosystem, where far-right hate is both exported from and imported to America. VSquare, a European investigative journalism outlet, reported that the Trump Administration’s “most influential think tank, The Heritage Foundation, is receiving proposals from illiberal forces in Poland and Hungary on how to shape the future of the European Union.” Hungary, which has banned Pride, even inspired Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.

Meanwhile, far-right actors including the Alliance Defending Freedom—the chief architect of Project 2025—have long since promoted religious, anti-LGBT laws around the globe. The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association (ILGA) released their own global trans rights map earlier this week, with similar findings: the political arc of international affairs is bending heavily towards transphobia.

ILGA Map 2025

“As trans people defend their right to bodily autonomy and identity, Europe’s identity and sovereignty are challenged, too,” the TGEU statement said. “The EU needs a renewed and strengthened LGBTIQ Strategy that specifically addresses the needs of marginalised groups, including trans people, disabled people, asylum seekers, and those facing multiple forms of marginalisation.”