Almost two-thirds of Europe’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community are still afraid to show their sexuality in public and most feel discriminated against, an EU report said on Friday, the International Day Against Homophobia.
“Fear, isolation and discrimination are everyday phenomena for the LGBT community in Europe,” the director of the European Union’s Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), Morten Kjaerum, wrote in the report.
The online survey, described as the largest of its kind, questioned around 93,000 people in the European Union’s 27 member states plus Croatia, which is to join the bloc in July.
Just over a quarter (26 per cent) of the respondents said that they had been physically or verbally assaulted over the last five years.
Transgenders suffered particularly, with 28 per cent saying they had been attacked or threatened more than three times in the last 12 months because of their sexuality, the report said.