Reframing the language of human rights? Political group contestations on women’s and LGBTQI rights in European Parliament debates

ABSTRACT

European integration is challenged on numerous grounds today with democracy and fundamental values at the center of the debates. The article analyses the role of the European Parliament’s political groups in shaping human rights as a core democratic value and the ways in which religion and gender equality are utilized. The research material consists of plenary debates and 130 MEP and staff interviews in the 8th and 9th legislatures. We discern three clusters in the ways in which the political groups frame human rights and gender equality: (i) ‘the defenders’, (ii) ‘the reframers’, and those (iii) ‘sitting on the fence’. Our analysis illustrates that core EU values such as human rights and equality are defended, challenged, and reframed by the political groups to an extent that they constitute key lines of division not only in between but also within the political groups.

KEYWORDS:

• European Parliament
• political groups
• human rights
• gender equality
• religion

Introduction

European integration has not just been an economic, but also a normative process, with the Treaty of the European Union Article 2 stipulating ‘respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and the respect for human rights, including rights of persons belonging to minorities’. The ‘community of values’ features prominently in the ongoing Article 7 procedures against Hungary and Poland and its importance intensified with the insistence of the European Parliament (EP) on a ‘Rule of Law conditionality’ in its negotiations with the Council of the European Union about the future European Union (EU) budget.

However, gender and sexual equality rights have become increasingly contested worldwide. Opposition has already been successful at international level in removing progressive language from UN documents in relation to sexual health and reproductive rights (Gilby, Koivusalo, and Atkins 2020). Whilst research on anti-gender mobilizations has often focused on either national case studies or a ‘Global Right’ perspective (Paternotte and Kuhar 2018), this article focuses on the political struggles at the supranational EP level. Extant research shows how in the EP, too, right-wing populist parties from different political groups use similar anti-gender rhetoric, also in the context of human rights (Kantola and Lombardo 2020). A crucial question for the future of European integration is how these dynamics play out between the political groups in the EP.

While the EP often takes a united position vis-à-vis the Council and the Commission, it is not a homogenous actor, but one characterized by struggles between and within its seven political groups (Brack 2018; McDonnell and Werner 2019), which in the 9th legislature (2019–2024) cover the European People’s Party (EPP); Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D); Renew Europe; Identity and Democracy (ID), Greens/European Free Alliance (Greens/EFA); European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR); and the Left group (GUE/NGL).¹

In this article, we analyse how the political groups in the EP understand and (re-)frame human rights. We trace conflicts and contestations between and within the political groups in relation to human rights and gender and examine the role of gendered religious arguments in redefining human rights in the EP. The article approaches parliamentary human rights debates as an arena allowing for the development of an alternative political project aiming at re-definition with notions of gender equality stemming from a catholic anthropology of ‘complementarity of the sexes’ and ‘equality in dignity’ (Garbagnoli 2016; Verloo and Paternotte 2018).

We build on two data sets: first, plenary debates of reports in the 8th and 9th legislatures concerning women’s and LGBTQI² rights; and, secondly, 130 interviews conducted in the EP during the same parliamentary terms. We discern three clusters of how the political groups represent and frame human rights and gender equality: ‘the defenders’, ‘the reframers’, and those ‘sitting on the fence’. Our analysis illustrates that political groups defend, challenge, and reframe core EU values such as human rights and equality to an extent that these rights constitute key lines of division not only between but also within the political groups.

The nexus of human rights, gender equality, and religion in the EP

Human rights in the EU are institutionalized in a remarkable way by including human rights as one of the founding principles, adopting the European Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFR), and supranational jurisprudence (Schimmelfennig 2006). The EU presents itself as founded on democratic values, a ‘community of values’ and a stronghold of women’s and LGBTQI rights (Slootmaeckers 2019). Of the EU institutions, especially the EP has used human rights to position itself vis-à-vis other EU institutions (Gfeller 2014). The EP projects an image of a sponsor, protector, and defender of fundamental rights both within and beyond the EU (Feliu and Serra 2015; Mckenzie and Meissner 2016). Nevertheless, the EP’s reputation as a progressive actor in the field of non-discrimination, gender equality, and sexuality politics as human rights is contested and contradictory. Despite the image of the EU and the EP in particular as human rights actors promoting democratization on a global scale (Börzel and Risse 2009; Feliu and Serra 2015), the struggle about the meaning of fundamental rights has intensified and requires deciphering which human rights narrative is promoted.

Despite the centrality of equality and human rights in the EU framework, contesting ‘women’s rights as human rights’ constitutes one of the main drivers of opposition to gender equality – next to defining ‘gender’ as socially constructed vs. biologically given, women’s reproductive rights, and LGBTQI rights (Chappell 2006, 510–514). Ambiguous EU values provided the Religious Right with the opportunity to adapt their rhetoric and strategies by replacing religious statements with human rights language, growing their Brussels presence and engaging with the EU’s institutional and policy-making contexts (De Vlieger and Tanasescu 2012; Mos 2018; Zacharenko 2020). Particularly the vaguely defined values of the CFR have ‘both a constraining and an enabling effect on the Religious Right’, who can ‘use the soft spots in the EU’s normative framework to its advantage’ (Mos 2018, 326, 336, emphasis in original). Mos’ analysis of two European Citizen Initiatives by the Christian Right illustrates that they a) framed their issues as one of human dignity and within EU legislative competence while dismissing their opponents’ claims as national ones, b) claimed to be treated as ‘second-order-citizens’ and thus victims, and c) refrained from referring to LGBTQI rights but used frames like child welfare instead (Mos 2018, 332–336).

Key to opposing the place of ‘gender’ in contemporary European politics – including European integration – is the coining of the term ‘gender ideology’. Radical right actors oppose gender equality by reframing it as a dangerous and elitist ‘gender ideology’, which they argue challenges traditional family values based on heteronormative relationships and education, the sexual division of labour in the private sphere, and promotes sexual and reproductive rights (Kováts 2018; Korolczuk and Graff 2018; Kuhar and Paternotte 2017; Rawłuszko 2021). Others have shown the fight against ‘gender ideology’ is in essence a struggle against the denaturalization of the sexual order aiming to delegitimize feminist and LGBTQI struggles for gender equality (Garbagnoli 2016). Hence, the opposition against ‘gender’ employs many sources and can be attributed to various groups (both secular and religious), with often different agendas connected by the ‘symbolic glue’ of anti-gender rhetoric (Kováts and Põim 2015).

The critical role of organized religions, especially the Roman catholic church, in formulating, deploying, spreading, and mainstreaming of anti-gender ideology rhetoric is extensively explored (Kuhar and Paternotte 2017; Korolczuk 2016; Bracke and Paternotte 2016; Garbagnoli 2016). Indeed, Bracke and Paternotte (2016, 144) claim that ‘these oppositions to “gender” can be read as projects of alternative knowledge production’. This article follows in a similar vein, aiming to unpack and disentangle frames opposing gender equality without adhering to a backlash narrative or the idealized EP image as perfect equality actor (Verloo and Paternotte 2018). By exploring how political actors in the EP (re-)frame human rights, the article contributes to the debates on the varieties of oppositions to gender equality by looking at how content develops. We explore how the human rights rhetoric is not necessarily a fixed and coherent normative set of demands, especially given their ambiguous formulation in the EU context, but rather an open discursive field constantly re-defined and contested by political actors.

The emergence, consolidation, and spread of these frames and issues has not yet been extensively researched in the EP context. This article explores the framings and re-framings of human rights articulated by political groups. The EP has traditionally been seen as a two-dimensional competitive arena structured along a socio-economic left versus right cleavage and an integration versus demarcation divide (Hix, Noury, and Roland 2005); while others suggested to classify political groups as either pro- or anti-EU integration (Hooghe, Marks, and Wilson 2002). More recently scholars emphasised the dimension of GAL (Greens, Alternatives, Libertarians) versus TAN (Traditionalists, Authoritarians, Nationalists) with ‘strong associations between party score on the GAL/TAN dimension, overall support for European integration, and support for particular aspects of European integration, including environmental policy, asylum policy, and strengthening the European Parliament’ (Hooghe, Marks, and Wilson 2002, 985; see also Brack 2018, 56, 83). The impact of radical right populists, who are located on the TAN dimension, occurs mainly in the plenary, rather than in the actual policy-making processes, because the plenary offers a platform to express visibly their anti-gender equality and anti-human rights views to their electorates (Brack 2018; Kantola and Lombardo 2020).

Moreover, morality politics has been argued to bring another dividing line cross-cutting the political groups (Mondo and Close 2018, 1005). Kantola and Lombardo (2020) have identified multiple direct and indirect oppositional strategies against gender equality and sexuality policies in EP plenary debates. Central to direct opposition is not only outright rejection of gender equality but also appeals to ‘gender ideology’. Their analysis shows that indirect opposition to gender equality comes in many forms such as embedding it in Euroscepticism and subsidiarity debates, bending gender equality towards other issues such as migration, depoliticizing gender by recurring to biology, and finally, self-victimizing and blaming game – to putting focus away from gender equality (Kantola and Lombardo 2020). Consequently, we contend that cleavages around gender, human rights, and the role of religion need to be examined by engaging with framings of political groups to reveal their specific constellations across the usually dividing lines.

The qualitative analysis of human rights, gender equality, and religion in the EP

Scholars have extensively used quantitative studies to analyse voting patterns of political groups and their cohesion, also on normative issues (Mondo and Close 2018). In one of the rare quantitative frame analyses on EU integration, Helbling et al. (2010) compared aggregated positions of EP party families on EU integration using a ‘core sentence analysis’ of quality newspapers in five Western European countries. Like Helbling et al. (2010), we favour an inductive approach to uncover the complexity of frames used.

In our study, we use qualitative methods to examine how political groups construct the meaning of human rights. Qualitative analysis allows deciphering the micropolitical complexity and nuanced discussion of the contents of the plenary speeches; it reveals the interpretative dimensions of human rights framings, instead of determining incidence and prevalence (Luborsky and Rubinstein 1995). We found that examining human rights frames requires capturing minimal nuances in the raw data (plenary debates) while voting patterns and aggregated descriptions are too broad to reveal the fine print. Our approach is supported by the observation that extant research on deliberation in the EP has focused on quality of deliberation, the main product, the content was arguably left out (Roger 2016). As our analysis will show, human rights debates happen in a contested equilibrium and even slight discursive changes may tip frames in one way or the other (see also Gilby, Koivusalo, and Atkins 2020).

To examine deliberations, we draw on the methodologies developed by discursive approaches to gender equality, inspired by critical frame analysis where framing means articulating what the political problem is and how it should be solved (Ferree 2003; Benford and Snow 2000). In feminist political analysis, this signifies studying how different discursive framings can ‘stretch’ the meaning of gender equality by broadening it, ‘bend’ it towards other goals than gender equality, and ‘fix’ the meaning of gender equality in ways that hamper or favour its progress (Lombardo, Meier, and Verloo 2009; Kantola and Lombardo 2020).

We focus on the EP plenary as the most important deliberative public space equipping political groups with ample public attention to express their views (Brack 2018; Kantola and Lombardo 2020). Furthermore, we predicate that topical issues not subject to standard (non-)legislative procedures and only covered in plenary debates require political groups to position themselves. Likewise, we expect that such plenary debates give individual MEPs the opportunity to express views not shared by most of their political group. This brings out the tensions between the MEPs and political groups. Importantly, our approach allows us to explore internal conflicts and differences both between and within the political groups.

The standard procedures of the EP apply mainly to (legislative) reports and other output. Other (non-legislative) subjects have their own specific procedures, among them public plenary debates about topical, often norm-driven, issues, which have received almost no scholarly attention. Consequently, we selected plenary debates from the 8^th and 9^th EP legislatures on highly contested topics discussed only in the form of plenary debates and not covered by standard committee (legislative) reports. We prioritized these kinds of plenary debates over the typical and well-researched report procedures because we expect political groups to form their political position without much negotiation with other political groups. The selected cases are ‘pure’ events of parliamentary deliberation revealing more than other EP debates the core political positions of the groups, although still filtered through political groups identity and their internal commitment to certain positions.

We analysed in depth nine plenary debates dedicated to questions of human rights, gender equality and potentially religious issues.³ For the 8^th legislature the empowering women and girls through education debate (2015); three debates on Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) (2015, 2017, 2018); the debate on the state of women’s rights in Poland (2016); the EP resolution on the persecution of homosexual men in Chechnya (2017); and the EP resolution on the rights of intersex people (2019). For the 9th parliamentary term, the debate on public discrimination, hate speech, and ‘LGBT free zones’ in Poland (2019); and the debate on the criminalization of sexual education in Poland (2019).

We complemented the examination of the plenary debates with a second dataset and analysis of 130 interviews with MEPs and political group staff for a study on political groups gender equality practices and policies (2018–2020). The interviews focused on EP political groups, their internal gender equality practices, and their political positions on equality issues. Building on grounded theory (Corbin and Strauss 2008), we coded all interviews deductively and inductively with Atlas.Ti in an iterative team process. Human rights as a keyword occurred directly in some interviews but became mainly visible through a meta-analysis of the codes: ‘LGBTQI rights’, ‘religion’, ‘reproductive rights’.

We also used the codes generated in the interview analysis to code initially the content of the plenary debates. In addition, we analysed the plenary debates regarding (1) which political group(s) initiated the debate and what potential alliances this shows for political groups; (2) views expressed in the plenary debates by MEPs from the different political groups and coherence along the group line; (3) the subtext of statements potentially dividing gender equality from human rights and how political groups (or single MEPs) discursively reframe them. In a final step, juxtaposing the results from the plenary debates with our interview analysis allowed us drawing a complex systematization of political group positions.

In the following empirical analysis, we identify three clusters of political groups regarding how they (re-)frame human rights: (i) the defenders, (ii) the ‘reframers’, and (iii) sitting on the fence. The analysis illustrates the crucial connection between religion, human rights and gender equality particularly for conservative political groups as well as key differences between political groups.

Cluster one: ‘defenders’ of women’s and LGBTQI rights as human rights

Political groups on the GAL spectrum are the main proponents of framing women and LGBTQI rights as integral, universal, and indivisible human rights. Accordingly, MEPs from S&D, Greens/EFA, GUE/NGL and ALDE/Renew initiated the resolutions against public discrimination and hate speech against LGBTQI people, including ‘LGBT free zones’ in 2019 and the motion for a resolution on the criminalisation of sexual education in Poland in 2019. Moreover, the four political groups, joined by the EPP, framed the 2019 ‘Intersex resolution’ as one of human rights and thus as an EU competence in protecting its core values. They also called for de-pathologizing ‘intersex health issues’ and understanding any discrimination towards intergender people as discrimination based on gender in the legal framework of treaty Article 19 on anti-discrimination.

Public framing of human rights and gender equality

While Helbling et al. (2010, 514) found ‘the Greens show the most heterogeneous discourse of all’, they appeared as the most cohesive proponents of human rights in our cases. The Greens/EFA group voted and defended consistently LQBTQI rights and gender equality in the EP. The religion-human rights-gender equality nexus constructs the identity of the political group and Greens/EFA call for a clear positioning of the EU. Similarly, GUE/NGL keep a strong group line on the indivisibility of human rights and gender equality as a clear marker of political group identity: ‘An attack against certain rights is always an attack on all other rights’. (Manuel Bompard, GUE/NGL, debate on ‘LGBT free zones in Poland’, December 2019). Our interview data confirmed that opposing views are not tolerated and potentially sanctioned for both political groups, as one staff member stated: ‘the dominating opinion is, as inclusive as possible. (…) an uncompromising self-identity, and if you have a different opinion, you get into trouble, because it is simply not accepted’ (Interview 1).⁴

Plenary speeches by S&D and ALDE/Renew MEPs also frame promoting women and LGBTQI rights as a European identity issue; yet the perception of it as a political group identity issue is less pronounced. In this framing, gender and sexuality rights are presented as a litmus test of progress and civilization and an issue politicized as ‘inherently European’ (cf. Slootmaeckers, Touquet, and Vermeersch 2016, 3–7). Extant research has demonstrated that LGBTQI rights have become increasingly important for relations between the EU and neighbouring countries. They provide a source of political contestation and a marker of other countries’ modernization (Slootmaeckers, Touquet, and Vermeersch 2016, 3). Mirroring this, MEP Maria Arena (S&D) stated in the debate on hate speech and ‘LGBT free zones’ in Poland in November 2019 that ‘Europe is a pioneer of LGBTI rights and I am proud of it’. There is a clear understanding of the EU standing vis-à-vis others in defending and promoting human rights, including women’s and LGBTQI rights.

‘Defender’ MEPs stress women’s and LGBTQI rights as fundamental EU values and universal human rights in all examined plenary debates. They are also willing to recognise and tackle problems within the EU and its member states – not just in neighbouring countries. Consequently, S&D and ALDE/Renew group plenary interventions frame their arguments as ‘civilization vs. obscurantism’ as the statement by Pier Antonio Panzeri (S&D) in the plenary debate on the situation of women in Poland in October 2016 shows:

I fully support the struggle of Polish women and I am convinced that the ongoing movement will defeat conservative and obscurantist positions and overwhelm this patriarchal terrorism of the different sectors of Polish society and return your splendid country to the Europe of rights because it is worth being in this Europe of law.

Likewise, Sophia in ‘t Veld (ALDE) stated in the same debate: ‘We are talking about civilisation here’. Such a framing demonstrates a teleological understanding of human rights, with notions of backwardness and obscurantism opposing modernity and the ‘21st century’. Julie Ward (S&D) exemplifies this frame by arguing that ‘Poland needs to enter the 21st century’ in the plenary debate on the criminalization of sexual education in Poland (November 2019).

Finally, the ‘defenders’ cluster often argued that there could never be any religious or ‘traditional values’ reasons for discrimination and breaches of human rights:

We are denouncing an extreme case, like that of Chechnya, which is right and should be denounced, but also within our borders the people from the LGBTI community are subject to discrimination that too often doesn’t find justification related to culture, tradition, and religion. Here too we must prove to be coherent. (Pier Antonio Panzeri, S&D, debate on persecution of (perceived) homosexual men in Chechnya, Russia, May 2017)

Tensions and contradictions within the cluster

Nonetheless, the ‘defenders’ cluster is not a uniform group. Indeed, there are contradictions and tensions within the political groups themselves. Italian MEPs in S&D sometimes voted against the group line, which was then followed up by instructing them to vote together or abstain to avoid group sanctions (Interview 2). While trying to hold a united group position on gender equality as an element of human rights, S&D interviewees scrutinized the broader picture and how it shaped EP politics, for instance, how the success of religious-based politics in countries like Hungary connected with social issues and how these were addressed by involving the church in children’s education. Yet, not only countries with a strong catholic majority were seen as a threat to women’s rights, but also the orthodox church in Greece and its influence on MEPs. Moreover, religion was a taboo for some national delegations and this even prevented tabling some texts: reports on the sex industry and the role of religious sects never reached the plenary (Interview 3).

The MEP plenary interventions from the ‘defenders’ cluster also expose contradictions and tensions in the camp. The performative proclamations of MEPs about the integrity and universalism of human rights create an identity narrative about the political groups, the EP and ‘Europe’. The positioning of oneself, be it the EU, the EP, or one’s political group, as a promoter and defender of human rights creates a dichotomous ‘us’ versus ‘them’ who are necessarily backward, obscurantist, and ‘other’ to Europe. The othering of homophobia and opposition to gender equality strategically and geographically frames them as an external issue. This is clear in how unified the MEPs criticized Russia and Chechnya in the debates on the persecution of (perceived) homosexual men in May 2017, as well as in the debates on FGM. Thus, ‘Western exceptionalism’ (Kulpa and Mizielińska 2011) is reinforced in the human rights-gender equality-religion nexus. It not only promotes a fault line between political groups in the EP, but also a geopolitical division into friendly and homophobic/anti-gender countries, suggesting that the EU (or certain political groups) are unique in their open-mindedness and tolerance (cf. Slootmaeckers, Touquet, and Vermeersch 2016).

Consequently, tensions occur when the attack on women’s and LGBTQI rights originates from within the EU, as the debates on Poland demonstrate. Within this framing, the ‘old’ (Western) member states or the ‘defender’ political groups are cast as ‘knowledgeable teachers of democracy, liberalism, and tolerance’ (Kahlina 2015, 74), with ‘new’ (Eastern) member states and other political groups rendered as permanently in transition – needing to ‘catch-up’ as statements like ‘no return to Middle Ages’, ‘realizing it is the 21st century’, and ‘barbarism’ by ‘defender’ MEPs illustrate. This added another layer of ambiguity, with EU member states as ‘offenders’, human rights breaches could no longer be externalised to third countries, providing an internal dissonance for ‘defender’ groups.

Cluster two: ‘reframers’ of human rights with recourse to a religious sexual order

The second cluster comprises political groups that challenge the defenders’ discourses and aim at reframing human rights by intertwining them with a religious sexual order. The cluster corresponds to the TAN spectrum (Hooghe, Marks, and Wilson 2002) and includes the ECR and ENF/ID groups in the 8^th and 9^th parliaments. These groups are Eurosceptic, often using anti-EU rhetoric, which is visible also in the way they frame human rights with strong recourse to both religious and ‘sovereignty’ arguments.

Public framing of human rights and gender equality

The political groups within this cluster utilize direct and indirect opposition strategies to gender equality in the context of human rights debates (see also Kantola and Lombardo 2020). In the analysed debates, Polish ECR MEPs presented arguments about sovereignty, subsidiarity, and their own understanding of what equality and anti-discrimination entailed. In the debate on ‘LGBT free zones’ in Poland in 2019, they posited Christianity as under attack from ‘LGBT activists’, with Beata Kempa (ECR) claiming that ‘LGBT activists have often offended religious feelings of millions of Christians’ and calling LGBTQI rights an ‘aggressive ideology of a minority’, a ‘profanity, offense’. Patryk Jaki (ECR) amended:

Poland is one of the most tolerant and open states in the whole of Europe. (…) But this is not about people, it’s about ideology. Poland has the right to protect traditional and Catholic values, and the parents’ right to teach their children according to the rules they approve. Tolerance does not mean a lack of tolerance for traditional family patterns. That is what Poland is fighting for.

In addition, the rhetorical use of religion by the ‘reframers’ is both strategic and instrumental, consistently bending the meaning of gender equality within human rights towards other political goals. For instance, within this cluster’s framing, (Christian) Europe is juxtaposed to Islam; ‘Islamic others’ are presented as homophobic or bringing homophobia. Especially ENF (now ID) MEPs use such homonationalist arguments (Puar 2013). This cluster demonstrates a paradoxical framing of the ‘ultimate other’: be it Muslim, gay, or feminist. Rhetorical conflations can be observed in the plenary debate on the situation of women in Poland in October 2016:

Abominable abortion dealing is thoroughly researched statistically and encompasses the whole of the so-called civilized West. It does not encompass some buddhists or islamists because they do not have the right to abortion and they do not register it there. (…) In all Western countries there are 50 million legally registered abortions annually. (…) All of WW2 claimed less lives around the world (…) Is this not a mass suicide of Western civilization? Can we really wonder that the depopulating land is being populated by islamists? We are forgetting the basic order from God. God said to man: ‘go forth and reproduce and populate the Earth’ and we are depopulating this Earth. (…) the remnants of the glorious Latin culture are dying out. (Michał Marusik ENF)

The second cluster is thus prone to ignoring their anti-choice and anti-LGBT frame if it suits their Islamophobic and racist frames. Accordingly, Polish ECR MEPs aimed to deflect attention from the domestic situation: during the plenary debate on the situation of women in Poland in October 2016, MEP Jadwiga Wiśniewska asked why the EP was not debating the situation in Germany, in particular the ‘migration crisis’ after the ‘New Year’s Eve events and Oktoberfest events’ that ‘breached women’s rights’. The question also connects to the radical right populist discourse strategy of self-victimisation and blaming others for double standards (Kantola and Lombardo 2020).

Polish ECR MEPs also turn women’s rights, especially on the topic of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), to a conversation about the ‘right to life since conception’, thus extending the category to foetuses and embryos and redefining a fundamental human right according to catholic dogma. During the plenary debate on the situation of women in Poland in October 2016, Marek Jurek (ECR) stated that the Charter of Fundamental Rights stipulates the right to life, in his interpretation equating the termination of pregnancy with murder, claiming that the ‘right to life, as a fundamental democratic value, cannot be differentiated based on the phase of life’.

Thus, our analysis confirms Hennig’s (2018) findings of political genderphobia at play for especially Eastern European ECR and ENF MEPs. Overall, when defending the ‘traditional culture’ or sovereignty of member states from EU interference we observed recourse to anti-feminism (especially by Polish MEPs) and political homophobia as an element of Euroscepticism, which demonstrates the lack of cohesion in the cluster. The ‘reframers’ are the flip side of the ‘defenders’ arguments of cluster one that associated women’s and LGBTQI rights with human rights and posited the EU as their chief defender.

Tensions and contradictions within the cluster

The ‘reframers’ cluster is not homogenous in how they frame gender equality vis-à-vis human rights and the role of religion therein. The discursive tensions were visible especially within the ECR group. In the 8^th legislature the ECR was mainly composed of national delegations from the British Conservatives and the Polish Law and Justice Party (PiS); two parties that hold different views on religion, human rights and gender equality.⁵ Not surprisingly, the opposing views created internal tensions and conflict, resulted in split group votes and never led to negotiating a common position. The following citations from an ECR MEP interview illustrate the multiple struggles:

(T)he most offensive to me as a liberal woman in the parliament here, is that actually you conflate religion with issues of gender too. So, in my own political group, I’ve got a very strong Catholic representation and on religious grounds many in my political group will always vote against any piece of legislation that refers to the rights of women to have access to family planning. (…) The idea that any of my colleagues would vote purely on the basis of religion to prevent funding going to women in Africa if it’s for family planning purposes, I really struggle with. (Interview 4)

While the above quote shows the individual struggles and the existence of contrary individual views on the subject, the common understanding in ECR was to accept these and allow for a broad variety of positions. The following quotation furthermore illustrates that this conflict was known and accepted from the beginning and at no point threatened the political group itself; the group tolerated questioning women’s rights as human rights based on religion.

We (…) are a group that believes in essentially the member states, the individual countries as being the driving force for the whole European Union more than other groups do, we have to and do, all the time respect national interests so if people have a national interest that’s different to the majority position of the group, there will be no sanction against it. Not so much on gender-based issues but we do tend to divide on issues to do with reproductive rights for instance, on national delegations, rather than on gender. (…) We have known about that since the beginning so it’s not a problem at no level. At least it hasn’t ever become a big problem. (Interview 5)

Although the opposing views were obvious and accepted from the beginning, they nevertheless created tensions, not only on an individual, but also on a political group identity level, as the following quote shows.

But when it comes to things like for instance sexual orientation, this for some of the people in the ECR Group is problematic. When it comes to religion, for some people this is problematic. So, I think there’s a lot of work that still needs to be done within the ECR Group when you look at diversity or at equality or anti-discrimination agenda overall. (Interview 6)

While the ECR in the 8^th legislature was balanced due to the comparative strength of British Conservative and Polish PiS MEPs, this balance disappeared after Brexit. Thus, ECR religious-based opposition to gender equality as a human rights issue becomes more visible, not only in plenary, as shown in our case analysis, but also in committee work and informal spaces. Resisting the ratification of the Istanbul Convention was important to the Polish delegation and has become a hot topic in the 9th legislature (Interview 6; see also Berthet 2021).

Cluster three: sitting on the fence

The final cluster of political groups ‘sit on the fence’: EPP and EFDD neither push for an expansion of the definition of human rights to include more rights groups, nor reframe them actively using anti-gender statements and homophobia. The groups in this cluster are not cohesive or clear in their overall positioning – they combine conflicting frames. Compared to the ‘defenders’ cluster, the positions of the EPP and the EFDD were torn and the two groups fluctuated between the first and the second clusters. Contrary to Helbling et al. (2010, 511), we found the EPP nowadays to be less cohesive in supporting multicultural-universalist values such as inclusive human rights in European integration. Falling within the TAN spectrum, the EPP is nonetheless classified as a pro-EU integration force (Hooghe, Marks, and Wilson 2002) and the EFDD included at least one non-Eurosceptic national delegation (Five Stars Movement, M5S). Given the size of the EPP, their group positioning potentially tips the scale for the final EP position and is therefore of particular importance. The following section discusses the implications of the ambiguity of the groups on human rights.

Public framing of human rights and gender equality

Some EPP MEPs took a progressive stance in the plenary and, for instance, supported the Intersex resolution as well as the resolutions against ‘LGBT free zones’ and in favour of sexual education in Poland in 2019. Especially women EPP MEPs from Western and Nordic Member States were vocal on the issues of women’s rights. During the plenary debate on the situation of women in Poland in October 2016, Anna Maria Corazza Bildt (EPP) expressed this position as:

(T)oday I stand by the women of Poland claiming their rights. I guess one of the feelings we have here, when we have all these brilliant men pundits talking about our body, and that we share with the women of Poland, is that we are not incubators; we are not reproductive machines. That is a general shared women’s right, and women’s rights are human rights. It is the right to our health, to our reproductive health, to our body, and to our freedom to choose. And yes, we should talk about that in this House. It should be a public debate.

She was seconded in the debate by the Finnish MEP Sirpa Pietikäinen (EPP) who strongly expressed the position that ‘women are human beings and human rights belong to women’. The vocal EPP MEPs also connected the emphasis on indivisible human rights as core EU value with rejecting religious claims: ‘In our times, hate, homophobia, violence, discrimination, can never be justified in the name of religious values’ as Anna Maria Corazza Bildt argued in the debate on the persecution of (perceived) homosexual men in Chechnya, Russia, in May 2017. She was echoed by another EPP MEP:

This is not just a question about policy. It is a direct assault on human rights. (…) I’m a pioneer. I’m an LGBTQI person. I’m a practising Catholic. I am Irish and I am European and no one has the right to tell me where I should live and how I should live. (Maria Walsh, EPP, debate on ‘LGBT free zones’ in Poland, November 2019)

Tensions and contradictions within the cluster

Significantly, justifying classifying these groups as ‘sitting on the fence’, within the EPP and EFDD the arguments of the MEPs who see women’s and LGBTQI rights as human rights were very similar to the ‘defender’ cluster narratives. The major difference between cluster one and three was the degree to which the promoters were willing to publicly present these issues as ‘core identity’ values for their political group. These tensions were visible in the interviews and plenary debates: for example, in the EPP, on SRHR ‘it’s a free vote, based on what people’s perceptions are’ (Interview 7), which undermines overall group cohesion in voting. In the plenary debate on the criminalisation of sexual education in Poland, EPP MEPs showed interesting differences in positions: one Czech MEP was speaking against sex education in general, another in favour; a Croatian MEP was also in favour of sex education, undermining the notion that the anti-gender equality stance comes from Central and Eastern Europe (see also Chiva 2019). Importantly, the lack of consistency in the framings opened the discursive field to contestations and allowed for more vocal redefinitions.

Other studies found that British EFDD MEPs opposed certain gender equality policies such as quotas, and others (most famously Beatrix von Storch, AfD, Germany) strongly articulated the gender ideology discourse and were not publicly opposed by political group members. Overall, EFDD was split and the Italian M5S MEPs often supported gender equality issues, demonstrating ambiguity in a group more on the TAN side (Kantola and Lombardo 2020).

Clear concerns and differences exist between the national delegations within EPP concerning women’s rights. These showed less in plenary debates but appeared strongly in our interview data. One women EPP MEP said:

The Germans are pretty bad on this. They think that gender and all this (women) is family politics and that belongs to member state level, like sexual, reproductive rights and abortion and taxation and anything. They are very severely against any more legislation or even collecting data or raising this family matter. Interesting isn’t it? Women are a family matter. On the European level. So, it’s Germans. French and Spaniards are much better, it’s the whole Eastern European, almost, not all but, big part, almost all, Eastern European part, especially men. (Interview 8)

The lack of clear patterns of support for inclusive human rights understandings within this cluster led to concerns about the group positions. Struggling with the public image of the political group also concerned EPP MEPs. As the following citation illustrates, EPP was divided along religious lines, even though it was more of a problem of single MEPs and less of the overall group.

But then, to me the question is come on, there’s 700 MEPs in the Parliament, and we are on the fringes with the extreme right, voting against these issues. Ooh? Why are we in that corner? And this is the issue and the tough issue for us, and that is based with Catholicism, right-wing movement and some of our MEPs in that sense. And I would say that our EPP group in the FEMM Committee, is even more conservative in some of the cases than ECR. But it’s dependent on individual people and this whole mess with Catholicism and abortion and family issues. (Interview 8)

While the EPP claimed to hold a common position on gender equality with some deviant religious-driven positions, an EFDD interviewee perceived the conflicts on gender equality not only as religion-based, but more as a general difference between countries:

This is an area where, and I’m gonna tell you exactly what I think, where Europe and the EU is not all the same. Sweden, Denmark and my own country are very different from Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia. This applies not merely to equalities, it applies to religious equality, it applies to attitudes to sexual choices, and so on and so forth. (Interview 9)

This final ‘sitting on the fence’ cluster of political groups has exposed how important the differences stemming from national delegations are in the EP. By ‘sitting on the fence’ the EPP and EFDD were status quo groups, but also groups exhibiting internal tensions. The ambiguity and heterogeneity of the framings led to a lack of pattern and consistency in terms of progressive framings or the defense of inclusive understandings of human rights. Moreover, it precluded the EPP and the EFDD from presenting themselves as a consistently pro-human right and pro-equality actors. In this context, the national and geographical divisions were even more important due to the size of the EPP. The EPP positioning could tip scales between the ‘defenders’ and ‘reframers’.

Conclusions

As the self-purported promoter of human rights ‘at home and abroad’, the European Parliament has become a deliberative space for (re-)framing the ambiguous content of human rights as EU fundamental values. Plenary debates of non-legislative proposals arguably provided MEPs with the discursive room to express more easily positions not in line with their political group. Overall, our analysis has shown strong tensions within the EP and in fact within the political groups when it comes to human rights, gender equality, and religion. Like Mondo and Close’s (2018) findings on morality politics, we demonstrated that political positions depend on national delegations and less on political ideology or political groups.

Setting aside the traditional left/right as well as the GAL/TAN dimensions of political contestation, we identified three clusters aiming to (re-)frame human rights and gender equality: the ‘defenders’, the ‘reframers’, and the ones ‘sitting on the fence’. The first cluster considered gender equality and LGBTQI rights as universal and indivisible human rights. Political groups within this cluster often saw the defense of gender equality and human rights as an identity issue for their groups and for the EU with no room for religion or ‘traditional values’ questioning this universalism. The ‘reframers’ cluster on the other hand has demonstrated consistent opposition strategies to viewing gender equality as a facet of human rights. ECR and ENF/ID applied strategic religious frames to produce an alternative understanding of human rights based on Christian anthropology and catholic dogma. In the last cluster, ‘sitting on the fence’, framing strategies depended strongly on the respective national delegation and the political group position was less consistent. Contributing to the extant debates on human rights in the EU, our analysis elaborated the specifics of the framings used by the political groups in the EP and elucidated some of the pitfalls of the ambiguous human rights understandings (Mos 2020).

Our article highlighted the tensions and the fragility of the definition of human rights as containing women’s and LGBTQI rights. Political groups were not uniform blocks and women’s and LGBTQI rights issues exposed tensions. Our analysis demonstrated the content and the potential implications of human right re-definitions, elucidating one facet of the current oppositions to gender equality and LGBTQI in a transnational context. We focused on the productive nature of these oppositions and the tensions they create in a discursive field of human rights with competing new meanings. We also added to the discussion on the lines of contestation not only within the EP, but also on the universalism of human rights. ‘Othering’ mechanisms occurred in the debates around human rights, gender equality and religion, thereby creating categories of countries (civilized vs. barbaric), and backwardness vs. progress identities which showed clashes between and within the political groups. Given clashing member states positions in the Council about Article 7 procedures and the Rule of Law conditionality demanded by the EP, it remains to be seen if the latter can maintain its common position as a defender of a ‘community of values’ despite the conflicts between and within its political groups.

List of quoted interviews

1. GUE/NGL staff 06.05.2019, Brussels

2. S&D MEP 06.03.2020, Brussels

3. S&D MEP 02.11.2018, Brussels

4. ECR MEP 06.02.2019, Brussels

5. ECR staff 20.02.2019, Brussels

6. ECR MEP 05.12.2018, Brussels

7. EPP staff 06.03.2020, Brussels

8. EPP MEP 29.11.2018, Brussels

9. EFDD staff 07.02.2019, Brussels

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the interviewees for sharing their valuable time and ideas with us; and our EUGenDem colleagues Valentine Berthet, Anna Elomäki, and Cherry Miller for their work in data gathering, data coding, sharing ideas with us, and helpful suggestions on draft versions of the article. We are also indebted to two anonymous reviewers for their most valuable feed-back on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by European Research Council (ERC) funding under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program grant number 771676.

Notes

1. Political group changes since the 8th legislature (2014–2019): Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) dissolved, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) turned into Renew Europe, and Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) re-assembled as ID. The European United Left/Nordic Green Left changed its name to Left group in 2021.

2. LGBTQI stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, and Intersex.

3. A list of the plenary debates is provided as supplemental material.

4. Cf. list of quoted interviews at the end of the article.

5. For the 8th legislature, ECR was hard to classify due to this clear division. Since the Polish MEPs dominated the analysed plenary debates for ECR, we took this as an indicator for the group position and systematized them as cluster two and not cluster three.