The European Parliament has voted in favour of a proposed EU-wide ban on so-called conversion therapy, in a major symbolic win for LGBTQ+ rights across the bloc. The vote took place on 29 April and followed a European Citizens’ Initiative that gathered more than 1.2 million signatures in support of outlawing the practice.
The proposal will now be sent to the European Commission, which has the power to introduce legislation at EU level.
The vote builds on wider momentum inside European institutions. Earlier in the week, the European Economic and Social Committee held a debate on the issue and called both for stronger enforcement of the EU’s LGBTIQ+ Equality Strategy 2026–2030 and for a bloc-wide ban on conversion therapy. In a statement published on 29 April, EESC president Séamus Boland said the practices were not only harmful but a profound violation of human dignity and fundamental rights.
“Let us be absolutely clear: there is nothing to fix or cure,” Boland said. “What needs to change is not people, but the systems, attitudes, and structures that deny them their dignity.”
Conversion therapy is an umbrella term used for attempts to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, and can take many forms, ranging from talk-based interventions to physical abuse and so-called aversion practices. Most major medical organisations reject it as pseudoscientific and harmful. The American Psychiatric Association, for example, has described it as harmful and told members to refrain from attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation.
The practice is already banned in seven EU countries: France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Greece and Malta. Malta was the first EU country to outlaw it, doing so in 2016.
The Parliament’s vote does not itself create a ban, but it is an important political signal. It places formal pressure on the European Commission to act and reflects growing recognition within EU institutions that conversion therapy should be treated not as a fringe issue, but as a fundamental rights issue. That final sentence is an inference based on the vote, the petition, and the EESC’s framing of the practice as a human-rights violation.
