The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) wants to make it illegal to question someone’s self-chosen gender via a new proposal criminalising ‘conversion practices’.
‘Conversion practices’ traditionally mean practices aimed at changing, repressing or suppressing the sexual orientation. Activists have been pushing to include transgenderism to the equation in an expanded definition.
The controversial proposal, tabled by Kate Osborne, a UK Labour MP, seeks to treat those who do not affirm the self-chosen gender identity of people with gender-dysphoria the same way as those who want to “heal” homosexuality.
On January 29, the assembly will vote on a resolution calling for a Europe-wide ban on “conversion practices”.
The draft resolution, unanimously adopted by the PACE Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination in December 2025, urges member states to prohibit any attempt to change, repress or suppress a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.
Athena Forum, an Austria-based think-tank working to safeguard and advance sex-based rights, warns of a “dramatic expansion of the concept of conversion”. It says the move risks sweeping legal, professional and ideological overreach, with serious consequences for children, parents, clinicians and educators.
“The proposed resolution is a pure ideological overreach,” says Faika El-Nagashi, director of Athena Forum.
“It seeks to criminalise therapists, teachers and parents who do not affirm a child as transgender, while mandating training programmes, public campaigns and sex-education curricula centred on gender identity and expression. This is a transactivist Trojan horse.”
In the draft, PACE calls on member and observer states of the Council of Europe to prohibit conversion practices.
It further calls to integrate the prohibition of conversion practices within broader national anti-discrimination and inclusion strategies to protect the rights of LGBTI persons, together with monitoring and reporting mechanisms.
PACE’s Europe-wide ban on “conversion practices” would criminalise them, including misgendering – using pronouns, names, or gendered language that does not align with someone’s gender identity while extending the prohibition to advertising and cross-border referrals and introducing civil measures and complaint mechanisms.
It also seeks to train professionals, integrate diversity and anti-conversion content into school curricula and run public awareness campaigns to prevent so-called misinformation.
Victims would be supported through confidential counselling, legal aid, peer networks, early identification by frontline services and emergency housing where necessary.
Finally, the proposal encourages regular monitoring, research on prevalence and effectiveness and international co-operation to share best practices in maintaining a ban.
Athena Forum has published a policy brief outlining potential harm. It states that the ban risks restricting open, exploratory therapy and undermining evidence-based care for children facing other health or social challenges, including lesbian and gay adolescents.
The organisation also warns that expanding the scope of “conversion” to include verbal dissent, parental concerns and professional judgement could lead to legal and professional overreach.
“The historic concept of ‘conversion therapy’ applied to coercive practices against lesbians and gay men,” the brief notes.
“Applying the same label to children struggling with puberty or gender non-conforming behaviour misrepresents their needs and risks channeling them toward social, legal, and medical transition.”
Athena also calls on delegates to return the draft to committee for further scrutiny before adoption.
As part of the campaign, citizens across Europe are invited to email their national PACE members directly using a ready-to-send template available on Athena Forum’s website.
Brussels Signal reached out to Kate Osborne for a reaction but did not receive a reply at the time of publication.
NGOs and advocacy groups active on LGBT+ rights have been reporting on and campaigning around the issue for some time.
European citizens’ initiative reporting shows that more than 1 million Europeans signed a petition calling for a European Union‑wide ban on conversion practices, which now requires formal consideration by the European Commission.
LGBTQ organisation Stonewall has been campaigning for a fully inclusive ban and publicly thanked Osborne for pushing this forward.
The Council of Europe is Europe’s leading human rights organisation, an international intergovernmental body founded in 1949.
Its core mission is to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law across its 46 member states, which include nearly all European countries but it is not an EU institution and is separate from the bloc.
The organisation’s most well-known achievement is the European Convention on Human Rights, enforced by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, in 1950.
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