Irish delegation joins 200 campaigners to discuss future of trans rights in Europe

Around 200 trans activists gathered in Ljubljana, Slovenia, for the TGEU European and Central Asian Trans Council from 11 to 13 September 2026. An Irish delegation joined campaigners from across Europe and Central Asia in sharing experiences, building alliances, and developing coordinated strategies to resist anti-trans legislation and protect fundamental rights across the region.

Two hundred people, from countries across Europe and Central Asia, making the journey to Ljubljana to be in the same room. Not for a conference in the abstract sense, not to produce a document that gets filed away, but to do the unglamorous, essential work of comparing notes, building trust, and working out what comes next. That is what solidarity looks like in practice.

What the TGEU Council actually is

The TGEU Council meets every two years. This year's theme was Transphoria: collectively resist and celebrate again and again, and the choice of that word matters. The people who named it understood something that gets lost in a lot of political coverage of trans rights: resistance and joy are not opposites. They belong together. You resist because you want to live well, and you live well as an act of resistance.

Isa Nico Borrelli, Chair of the Board of TGEU, put it directly: "We resist so that we can live, and we live to celebrate. It is not by accident that our communities are the pillars of the fight for human rights." That is not a slogan, it is a description of what it actually takes to keep going when the political climate is hostile, when the headlines are bad, when the legal ground keeps shifting. You gather. You remind each other you are still here. And then you get back to work.

The political picture the council was responding to

The sessions at this year's council were shaped by a clear-eyed reading of where things stand. One focused specifically on combating anti-trans legislation and policy, bringing in Yanna Parnin from the Council of Europe's SOGIESC Unit and Susanne Knöfel from the European Commission's Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers. Another looked at the EU's neighbourhood as a new battleground, drawing in perspectives from Montenegro, Ukraine, Türkiye, and Slovenia.

Juliane Rosin, TGEU's Executive Director, named what is happening without softening it: "The same forces attacking the human rights of trans people are challenging the rights of all marginalised people, as well as democratic institutions, civil society and the principle that everyone should be able to live with dignity and respect." That is an accurate description of a pattern that is visible across multiple countries simultaneously, and it is exactly why a gathering like this one matters. The forces coordinating against trans rights are not working in isolation. The response cannot afford to be either.

Participants also examined strategic litigation before European and international courts, the experiences of trans asylum seekers and refugees within the Common European Asylum System, and the impact of digital rights and online hate. These are not peripheral issues. For many trans people across the region, they are daily realities.

Why Ireland being in the room matters

Ireland's delegation included Luna Liboni, Research and Policy Manager at TENI, and Sara Phillips, former chairperson of TENI. They brought Ireland's specific experience to a room full of people navigating very different legal and political contexts, and they came home with connections that Ireland's trans community will benefit from directly.

Daire Dempsey, TENI's Executive Director, put it plainly: "We're stronger together, and we'll win together." That is worth taking seriously, not as a rallying cry but as a practical observation. The countries that have made progress on trans rights have rarely done so entirely alone. They have learned from each other, borrowed strategies, pointed to what their neighbours have managed, and used the existence of coordinated European standards to push their own governments harder.

Luna Liboni's presence at the council, bringing Irish expertise and forming relationships with activists across the region, is part of how that process works. It is not glamorous. It is unglamorous, careful, relationship-building work, and it matters to the people whose rights depend on it being done well.

What a coordinated European approach can achieve

There is something that a coordinated European approach to trans rights can do that no single country can manage alone: it can make visible the fact that the same arguments, the same political forces, and often the same organisations are operating across multiple borders at once. When activists from Montenegro, Ukraine, Ireland, and Slovenia are comparing notes in the same room, they can see the pattern that individual national campaigns might miss.

That matters strategically. It also matters to the people living through it. Knowing that the hostility you are facing in your country is not unique, that others are facing it too and finding ways through, is not a small thing. Isa Nico Borrelli described the tension at the heart of this kind of gathering honestly: "There is always a tension between wanting to walk away from what hurts us and choosing, again, to stay. And gathering in this capacity says, 'We are here to stay.'"

I find that genuinely moving. Not in a sentimental way, but in the way that you feel when you see people doing something hard and doing it anyway. Two hundred people choosing to be in that room, to do that work, to stay.

The political moment is difficult. The legislative picture across Europe is uneven and, in some places, actively worsening. But the answer to that is not to work in isolation and hope for the best. It is to do exactly what happened in Ljubljana: show up, share what you know, build the alliances that will make the next phase of this fight more effective, and then go home and get back to work.

Ireland was in the room. That matters. And I hope the connections Luna Liboni and Sara Phillips built there bear fruit for trans people in Ireland and beyond for years to come.