“This Is a Union of Values”: The Rise of the LGBTI Rights Norm as Part of the EU’s Identity Construction

2021/07/09 by Laura Eigenmann
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #European Union Policy and Governance #Gender Politics and Representation #Political Influence and Corporate Strategies

paper · doi:10.1093/sp/jxab028

openalex publication_date 2021/07/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

Abstract Since the early 1990s, the EU has increasingly institutionalized lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) rights and more recently started to use them as a symbol for its modern and progressive identity. This article investigates this development, focusing on EU actors and institutions. Combining a genealogical analysis with the analysis of current discursive struggles around LGBTI rights within EU institutions, it shows that the rise of LGBTI rights is closely intertwined with the search for a common European identity, shared values, and attempts to strengthen solidarity in times when right-wing, nationalist, and Eurosceptic movements are increasingly challenging the EU’s legitimacy.

Citations

• Constructing the Self and Changing Others: Reconsidering `Normative Power Europe'
• International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

Related

• Global Queer Agonism: Normative Theory of the European Union in Times of Dissensus Over LGBT Equality
• The Journey of LGBT Rights: Norm Diffusion and its Challenges in EU Seeking States: Bosnia and Serbia
• LGBT recognition in EU accession states: How identification with Europe enhances the transformative power of discourse
• Queer theory, sex work and the European Union: on the constitutive exclusion of sex work from the European Union’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersexual policies
• The war on flags: The opposition to state-sponsored LGBTQ+ symbols