Transgender Europe You arrived at the homepage of the First European TransGender Council, which took place in Vienna 2005 and laid the foundation stone of Transgender Europe (TGEU). To face the current development of Transgender Europe please visit TGEU.ORG respectively it's facebook and twitter appearance.

The European Transgender Network

• believes that the acknowledgment and acceptance of gender diversity is a integral part of a modern European society.
• works for the empowerment and self determination all Gender Variant (Trans) people in Europe.
• works to increase the visibility and acceptance of ALL Trans people.
• works to ensure that all Trans people in Europe are afforded acceptance, respect and equality as European citizens.
• works to combat the unlawful discrimination and unequal treatment experienced by Trans people.
• opposes the continued exotisation of trans people and the persistent pathologisation of gender variance as a mental disorder.

Trans people (as used above) includes those people who have a gender identity which is different to the gender assigned at birth and those people who wish to portray their gender identity in a different way to the gender assigned at birth. It includes those people who feel they have to, or prefer or choose to, whether by clothing, accessories, cosmetics or body modification, present themselves differently to the expectations of the gender role assigned to them at birth.

This includes, among many others, transsexual and transgender people, transvestites, cross dressers, no gender and genderqueer people.

Our main demands

After the First Transgender Council in Vienna in 2005, the attendees of the Council, representing a total of over 100 European and National Trans Support Groups, voted for the following Demands to be made of the European Community and the nations of the Community:

1. The Right to a Free choice of given name

2. The Right to change one's legally registered gender/sex in all documents, to the gender/sex of the preferred gender role. This Right to be free of any prerequisites such as any required or forced psychological, psychotherapeutic or psychiatric assessment or treatment; a requirement for a medical/psychological diagnosis of 'gender dysphoria', 'gender identity disorder' or 'transsexualism'; hormonal treatment; invasive or non-invasive sex or gender reassignment surgery; sterilisation or infertility; and any requirement to be unmarried, or never married or to proceed with a divorce.

3. The Inclusion of Trans people in all Anti discrimination juridical case law, legislative programme or administrative policies in all European Union national treaties and legislation

4. The creation of a European wide programme of Protective Services opposed to Transphobic or other 'gender variant' related hate crimes.

5. The development of social, legal and administrative respect for the family lives of Trans people and their loved ones.

6. The Right to a Free choice of medical practitioners for all Trans people, regardless of national borders, and health care policies.

7. The Right to Political asylum for all those Trans people from Third Party nations, who are or will be prosecuted on grounds of their gender variance or sexual behaviour if returned to their own, or another, third party nation state.

8. The provision of European and National funding of sufficient support and education organisations on matters of concern to Trans people.

9. That European and Nation states include Trans, gender variant and queer concerns to be included in their Youth Welfare Programmes and legislation, including the development of Special Protections for trans and other gender variant children and adolescents, and the funding of specific trans-youth welfare, support and care projects.