Green Party LGBT News

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Jean Lambert, the Green MEP for London, welcomed the opinion from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) yesterday that a gay man should be entitled to his deceased partner's pension. Tadao Maruko, a 65-year-old German man, has been fighting for over two years to access his partner's pension, after being denied access by the German theatre pension fund. The fund said that only where the couple was married would the right exist to claim.

The Advocate General at the ECJ said that "the refusal of such a payment" to gay partners amounts to "indirect discrimination" where the relationship is similar to that of a married couple. The EU Court, which will rule on the case in the next six months, is expected to follow the opinion given yesterday. The final ruling will apply across the European Union and is likely to lead to some levelling of the rights of same sex
partnerships across the 27 nations.

Jean said:

"This decision from the Advocate General signifies real progress on equal rights of gay couples. It should also act as a wake-up call to pension providers that need to check their rules to ensure they are not indirectly discriminating against same-sex couples.

"I welcome this announcement, which comes during the European Year of Equal Opportunities. It's time for a new approach across the EU to make sure that lesbian and gay partnerships are recognised by the financial services industry."

The likely outcome of the case is that the ECJ will rule that partnerships between same-sex couples should be treated in the same way as marriages. However, this will currently only have an impact in countries where same-sex unions are recognized, such as in the UK where couples can enter into a civil partnership. In France and Luxembourg, for instance, such unions are not recognized as equal to marriage and in many European countries there is still no legal recognition for same-sex partnerships.