Breaking down the Come Out 4 Europe campaign
In the lead-up to the 2024 European Elections, we launched a Europe-wide campaign to gather signatures from candidates pledging to protect and advance LGBTI human rights if elected, and to get voters out to elect them.
ILGA-Europe’s Come Out 4 Europe campaign launched on March 4, 2014 and ran for three months in the lead up to the European Elections the following June. We created a six-point pledge for candidates to sign saying how they would go about protecting and advancing LGBTI human rights if elected to the European Parliament.
The core campaign message
Equality and the protection of the human rights of LGBTI people are inextricably interconnected with freedom, democracy and the protection of human rights in our societies in general. As we witness the rise of political forces that question basic fundamental rights and freedom, it is a time when we must all pull together for the Europe we want to see:
- A stronghold for democracy and inclusiveness
- where fundamental rights and freedom of everyone is protected
- with no tolerance for scapegoating by political leaders for their own power
The four campaign goals
- To gain signatures for the pledge
- To engage members in connecting to their candidates
- To get people out to vote
- To get pledge signers elected
- To provide a basis for engagement with elected candidates in the new parliament
Comeout.eu
The hub of the campaign was the comeout.eu website where there was:
- A form for election candidates to sign the pledge, with functionality to approve candidates
- An interactive leaderboard/map that was automatically updated when a candidate signed the pledge, showing which EU country had the most pledges signed.
- Methods of sharing updates from each country.
- Methods for voters to share which candidates have signed the pledge in their countries across a range of social media and communications platforms
On the comeout.eu website and in our social media, we shared a campaign teaser video, featuring activists and ILGA-Europe’s Executive Director, Chaber.
We also hosted and shared individual videos from activists across Europe in their own languages saying why the EU elections were important, and why people should vote for candidates who support LGBTI human rights. These influencer videos were viewed in large numbers.
Delivering on the goals
1. Signatures for the pledge
There were in total 1,110 signatures to the pledge across every country in the EU.
2. Member engagement
The Come Out 4 Europe campaign was designed for members to be able to use to engage candidates nationally. To support this we:
Held monthly online Monthly meetings from March to June;
designed and shared a toolkit with messaging, visuals and video content for members to use;
sent campaign update newsletters every two weeks, providing information on campaigning and practical help;
used the country ranking as a competitive element to motivate candidates to get pledge signatures;
encouraged and shared individual campaigns created by member organisation.
3. Voter mobilisation
ILGA-Europe campaigned across social media channels to engage voters from May 1st onwards
National campaigns also engaged large numbers of voters
Provisional turnout 51% (up 1% on 2019)
More than six in ten (64%) young EU citizens expressed their intention to vote
4. Elected candidates
Out of the 1,110 candidates who signed the Come Out 4 Europe pledge to protect, 164 were elected.
There are 720 seats in the European Parliament, meaning 24.17% of parliament pledged to protect and advance LGBTI human rights.
5. Basis for engagement
The pledge itself not only set out what must be done, but how it should be done. The online form also allowed candidates to say how they would incorporate these goals into their work as MEP’s. Therefore the pledge gave us clear ways in which to engage with elected candidates for our advocacy work in the next parliament term.
The quality of the campaign was remarked upon by many candidates, meaning it was taken seriously and established trust in ILGA-Europe as a voice to amplify the needs and goals of LGBTI member organisations across the EU.
There was a strong measure of response from elected candidates in the aftermath of the election, many of whom turned up to a special introductory event in the parliament the September after the election.
Post-election analysis
A special post-election episode of our podcast, The Frontline, analyses the results of the election and how they may play out for LGBTI human rights in the next term of the European Parliament, 2024 -2029. It is moderated by our Advocacy Director, Katrin Hugendubel, with co-chairs of the LGBTI Intergroup at the European parliament, freshly re-elected MEP’s Marc Angel from the Socialists & Democrats in Luxembourg and Kim van Sparrentak from the Greens/EFA in The Netherlands, alongside activists Luca Dudits from Hatter Society in Hungary and Roberto Muzetta from Arcigay in Italy.
