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The report, based on the legal survey of the LawsAndFamilies Database, finds that a growing European consensus suggests a core minimum of substantive rights and responsibilities that should at least be made available to same-sex couples (be it through cohabitation, through registered partnership, or through marriage). It concludes that this core minimum should at the very least consist of legal protections for times of death and other great sadness, plus the right to be able to live in the same country and the right to take some responsibility for each other’s children. The author of the report, Kees Waaldijk (professor of comparative sexual orientation law at Leiden University), argues that not only the member states and the political bodies of the Council of Europe could build on this emerging consensus, but also the European Court of Human Rights. See:
Kees Waaldijk, Extending rights, responsibilities and status to same-sex families: trends across Europe (report for the Council of Europe), Copenhagen: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, March 2018, https://rm.coe.int/extending-rights-responsibilities-and-status-to-same-sex-families-tran/168078f261.
This report has been launched at the Conference on Private and family life for LGBTI people (Copenhagen, 2 March 2018).