Study visit of the EU institutions and a meeting in Brussels

Brussels, 19 November 2015

This Monday and Tuesday (16-17 November), our Antonio Mihajlov took part at the study visit of the EU institutions in Brussels, organized by ILGA Europe and Sarajevo Open Centre.

This study visit, second in a row where Subversive Front has its own participant, aimed to more closely introduce the work of the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the European External Action Service, especially in the scope of advocacy for the rights of LGBTI people. Antonio, together with 15 other LGBTI activists from the Western Balkans countries, that are either candidate or potential candidate countries, met with representatives from the Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations, to whom they presented the critical issues LGBTI people in their countries are faced with, as well as their remarks on the newly published Annual reports of the countries on their progress towards the European Union. Antonio also held a speech during the launch of the newly established regional association of LGBTI organisations from Western Balkans and Turkey – ERA, in the European Parliament.

The next two days, 18 and 19 November, also in Brussels, Antonio, as a representative of Subversive Front, participated at the initial meeting of Sarajevo Open Centre, together with representatives from organisations from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Serbia, and from ILGA Europe, within the scope of the project “Utilizing EU integration processes for advancing the rights of the LGBTI people in Western Balkans”. This project aims to introduce systematized documentation of the human rights violations of the LGBTI people in the Western Balkans countries, and to advocate for the LGBTI rights at international level, i.e. in front of the EU institutions. The project, that is coordinated by Sarajevo Open Centre, and besides Subversive Front, has Labris from Serbia, Centre for Equality and Liberty from Kosovo, and CURE Foundation from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and ILGA Europe as partner organisations, is financed by the State Department, Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, within the amount of 332,000 US$.