Slovakia employment law anti-gay, says MEP

Date: 16/07/01

Slovakia has sent out a negative message to other states bidding for EU membership by failing to expressly outlaw discrimination against gay workers in its new employment rules, an MEP said this week.

Dutch Socialist Joke Swiebel was protesting against the Slovak parliament's decision to not include actions taken by employers against workers because of their sexual orientation in a law against discrimination in the workplace.

Swiebel, who heads an MEP cross-party group campaigning for gay rights, described the laws as "legally wrong" because Slovakia is required to place an EU directive forbidding anti-gay bias among employers on its statute books by December 2003 as part of its bid for Union membership. However, a spokesman for Bratislava's EU representation said homosexuals are already entitled to equal treatment under the country's constitution. Gay sex was decriminalised following the 'Velvet Revolution' in 1989, which led to the old Czechoslavakia splitting in two.