Children in Charge? The EU Is Pushing Self-Identification for Kids

Brussels has completely lost its mind over trans ideology. Under a new EU proposal, children could be allowed to choose their own gender, regardless of age. According to the “LGBTIQ+ equality strategy 2026-2030,” the European Commission intends to “facilitate exchanges of best practices among member states to support the development of legal gender-recognition procedures based on self-determination that are free from age restrictions.” In other words, children should be free to declare themselves transgender or nonbinary at whatever age they please, and the adults around them should take their new identities at face value. 

The trans activists pushing for these changes are likely to argue that ‘social transition’—when a person dresses in clothes of the opposite gender, uses different pronouns, and adopts another name—is completely harmless for children. The more ‘moderate’ gender ideologues believe that, even if there is an age restriction on prescribing hormones or undergoing gender-reassignment surgeries, there isn’t much danger in allowing a child to simply identify as the opposite sex. But this is far from true. In fact, we know that encouraging kids to shop around identities can be incredibly risky. Not only does it promote a negative body image, but it can also lead them towards medical intervention. 

Worse still, the EU has suggested it wants to put a stop to any therapists or other adult intervention that might convince children they are not trapped in the wrong body. According to the new proposal, Brussels aims to outlaw any “conversion practices” in countries where they are still legal. The issue is, ‘conversion therapy’ as it is normally understood is already illegal across Europe—that is, it is decidedly against the law of any EU country to kidnap, torture, or assault another person for any reason, especially not in order to change their gender or sexuality. The kind of practices the EU really has in its sights when it refers to banning ‘conversion therapy’ is actually more akin to therapy and counselling. As we have seen in places like Victoria, Australia, the aim is to actually criminalise anyone who refuses to uncritically affirm a child’s supposed trans identity. This would make it easier to set children on a path to irreversible medical transitions. 

What happens to member states that refuse to accept this blatant legal activism? The EU has suggested it will “block funds to discriminating regions” that push back against trans ideology. It threatens to “use all the instruments at its disposal to protect EU values and will not hesitate to take the actions, where appropriate, as it has done in the past.” This is exactly what happened to Hungary when it introduced its child-protection laws in 2021. Viktor Orbán’s government banned the promotion of homosexuality or transgender ideology to under-18s in schools, media, or advertising. In response, a furious Brussels decided to punish Budapest for not acquiescing to supposed EU values and took the case to the European Court of Justice—a ruling on which is due this year. It also suspended over €700 million in funding, claiming that Hungary’s law violated the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, a condition for receiving the money. 

More recently, Brussels attempted to strong-arm Orbán into allowing a Pride march in Budapest this June, after it was banned under the expanded child-protection law. The event was free to go ahead, organisers were told, so long as it took place in a private venue where children would not be admitted, and not on the streets of Budapest as originally planned. To the EU, though, this was unacceptable. Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen personally demanded that the parade go ahead, claiming that to ban it went against the EU’s “fundamental values.” The march ultimately took place in defiance of the ban, and around 70 MEPs attended, mostly from far-left, liberal, and green parties. 

Now Slovakia is facing similar action. Last month, Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico, a left-wing populist, achieved the parliamentary majority he needed to change the country’s constitution. His new amendment explicitly states that there are only two genders—male and female—a belief that is entirely in line with Slovakia’s majority Roman Catholic population. Similarly, the constitution also now states that only heterosexual married couples should be able to adopt, that paid surrogacy is illegal, and that parents should have the final say about what their kids are taught in sex-education classes. This has, naturally, enraged the EU. Brussels jumped to call the amendments—which were made in a perfectly democratic manner—“illegal,” as numerous MEPs warned that Slovakia was becoming “another Hungary.” This is all despite the fact that these reforms are strongly supported by Slovakians—according to polling, 70% support the new restrictions on adoption, and 80% believe that parents should have more control over what their children are taught in school. While the EU has only verbally chastised Slovakia so far, there could be legal proceedings on the horizon. 

The Eurocrats are likely getting nervous that they’re losing a grip on member states. Central European states like Hungary, Poland, and now Slovakia are refusing to bow down to the woke orthodoxies that the EU wants to peddle. Brussels has no right to be meddling in sovereign nations’ internal affairs like this. It certainly shouldn’t be attempting to coerce them into accepting gender self-identification for children—something that we know to be deeply harmful. Teaching kids to hate their own bodies is cruelty dressed up as progressive compassion. If these are ‘EU values’, then Europe desperately needs to recalibrate its moral compass.