According to an initiative presented today, the European Commission wants "anyone in the European Union (EU) to feel safe and free to love whoever they want, just as they are."

Therefore, the European Commission presented a strategy to be implemented between 2026 and 2030, which aims to "combat hate speech both offline and online."

To this end, Ursula von der Leyen's government wants to create a "hub to collect information on illegal hate speech online."

At the same time, the European Commission wants to "support Member States in ending conversion practices."

So-called "conversion therapies" are illegal activities that assume it is possible to alter a person's sexual orientation or change their perception of their own gender, using methods that are not supported by science.

The European Commission wants to create "actions to end them" and will consider a citizens' initiative to "ban conversion practices."

Brussels also indicates that discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender harms the European Union's competitiveness, as the European political-economic bloc "loses 89 million euros" annually, primarily due to obstacles to hiring LGBTQIA+ people.