History of the project
The Permanent Secretariat for a Queer, Feminist and Intersectional Europe is an initiative developed and supported by the French association Choisir la cause des femmes, founded in 1971 by Simone de Beauvoir and Gisèle Halimi.
In 1979, Gisèle Halimi had a simple idea: take the best laws in Europe for the rights of women and LGBTQIA+ people, and make them the standard for everyone.
1979 - An idea is born. On the eve of the first direct election of the European Parliament, the feminist and anti-colonialist lawyer Gisèle Halimi imagined harmonizing our rights upward, for European citizens and migrants alike.
2005-2008 - Volunteers take it up. The association “Choisir la Cause des Femmes”, founded by Simone de Beauvoir and Gisèle Halimi, brought together ordinary citizens to compare rights across European countries. In 2008, during the French Presidency of the European Union, it organized a two-day colloquium gathering experts and practitioners who had worked on how the project could be made feasible. A first study was published that same year.
Since 2009 - Political support. Four political groups of the European Parliament, The Left, The Greens, Socialists & Democrats and Renew, have carried the project since the 2009 elections.
2022-2023 - A European tour. A new team of volunteers met associations, unions, institutions and political leaders in the 27 EU countries to identify the most progressive laws, and the setbacks. A new edition of the study was published in 2023.
December 2023 - Nantes. European feminist meetings issued a call for the upward harmonization of our rights. Its proposals were taken into the 2024 European election campaign.
2024-2026 - Gaining ground. Hearings before the S&D and The Left groups, then before the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) in Vilnius and the FEMM Committee of the European Parliament, moved the project forward.
4 November 2026 - Launch. This website was launched in Brussels. It allows the network to grow, hosts an observatory of progress and setbacks in each member state, and offers shared tools to defend our rights: fact sheets, accounts of mobilizations, international solidarity, fundraising.
About the project
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In this spirit, we are promoting a set of laws applied in various countries of the EU, covering multiple aspects of our lives: sexual rights and reproductive justice, feminist families: making family differently, combating patriarchal violences, work as a means of economic self-reliance, and participation in political life.
Two major findings have thus emerged:
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In these five areas, inequalities exist within each EU country. These inequalities within Member States are further exacerbated when people also face other forms of discrimination on the basis of disability, religion, social or ethnic origin, or when they are migrants.
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But there are also inequalities between European citizens. For example, the situation of a person deciding to have an abortion will not be the same depending on whether they live in Sweden or in Poland. As a result, it is difficult to feel fully a European citizen on an equal footing with others.
Because conservative and even far-right parties have come to power in a growing number of EU countries, and as masculinist, religious, or political movements hostile to the rights of women and LGBTQIA people are gaining ground at the European level, we believe it is more essential than ever to change the very foundations of the European Union.
We believe that, as a necessary step in this process, a genuine dialogue must be opened up between all people living in EU (european citizens as well as migrants) on what, in concrete and legal terms, ensures in Member States the emancipation of every one even though their social class, race and gender.
Associations, researchers, trade unions, legal experts, and citizens interested in these issues join us in this ambitious project!