EU ambassador to attend gay pride in Serbia

The EU delegation will make the final decision on Mr Degert's attendance on Thursday, pending security advice.

The last Pride event in Belgrade, in 2001, ended in mass-scale street fights when football supporters' clubs, among others, attacked the pro-gay-rights marchers. A planned event in 2009 was cancelled over security fears. This year, Serb police plan to field between 3,000 and 5,000 officers - more than three officers per Pride demonstrator expected - in order to discourage violence.

Lazar Pavlovic, one of the event organisers, told this website that other EU embassies are also planning to send senior people to observe or stand alongside the demonstrators, but the final list of EU attendees is still unclear. Representatives from the Brussels-based campaign group, the European Region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA-Europe), are expected to come along, as well as individual protesters from nearby EU countries, such as Bulgaria.

Mr Pavlovic said the Serbian government has backed the 2010 demonstration in part due to concerns about its image in Brussels in the context of renewed talk on Serbia's EU accession prospects.

"Last year they underestimated the level of hatred that we face [in Serbia]. This year, they have arrested people who made threats against us and the minister for minority rights, Svetozar Ciplic, is planning to come along," he said.

"A very big factor is that all the eyes of the international community and of the European Union are on our government ... The EU should send a strong message that if a country cannot guarantee equal rights and equal treatment for its citizens, then that state cannot be a real candidate for EU membership."

EU member states in June this year adopted what they termed a "Toolkit to Promote and Protect the Enjoyment of all Human Rights by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) People."

The document, sent out to EU missions in third countries, carries a set of instructions for diplomats to, among other measures, attend court hearings in cases involving LGBT victims; make formal complaints or "demarches" on LGBT problems to host countries; include LGBT issues in their regular reports to Brussels and even "encourage partner countries to initiate legislative changes to ensure equality before the law."

MEPs, such as the Finnish chair of the European Parliament's human rights sub-committee, Green deputy Heidi Hautala, are also taking an increasing interest in the issue of gay rights on the EU's eastern fringe.

"A country aspiring to join the EU should strive to combat all discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. In the EU family there should be no room for prejudice and violence against the Other. At the end of the day this is about equality between each human being," Ms Hautala told EUobserver on the Belgrade event.

Institutionally-speaking, the EU's Mr Degert is now part of the European External Action Service rather than the European Commission. The commission itself is less keen to get directly involved in gay rights issues beyond the EU's borders.

A clause against discrimination on the grounds of "sexual orientation" in the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which was incorporated into the EU's Lisbon Treaty, has given it a soft mandate to police the situation inside the EU. But when asked for a comment about Serbia's responsibility to protect Pride marchers, a commission official said: "If they are an [EU membership] aspiring country, they know what's expected of them. But the commission has no legal authority to intervene."