In a judgment delivered today the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that homo- and bisexual persons are eligible groups for claiming asylum in EU and they cannot be requested to conceal their sexual orientation (X, Y, Z v Minister voor Immigratie en Asiel).
http://curia.europa.eu

In a judgment delivered last week (VfGH 19.06.2013, G 18, 19/2013) the Austrian Constitutional Court has struck down the statutory prohibition on performing registered partnerships outside the authority´s office-rooms. The governing coalition of Social- and Christian-Democrats however had again inserted such a prohibtion into a new law coming into force next fall. Thus the office-room-compulsion will be reintroduced by 1 November 2013 and the Christian-Democrats - despite the Consitutional Court´s judgment - do insist on this reintroduction. Rechtskomitee LAMBDA (RKL), Austria’s LGBT civil rights organisation, denounces this as unbearable chicanery.

In a judgment delivered today the German Federal Constitutional Court has held that the ban of successive adoption in same-sex registered couples violates fundamental rights. Thus registered partners will be able to adopt children which their same-sex partner has adopted before so that both partners are sharing joint legal parenthood, what so far has been a privilege exclusively for married couples of opposite gender. For details and for the full text of the judgment see: www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de

In its judgment delivered today in the case X et al. v Austria the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights held that Austria violated the European Convention on Human Rights by banning step-parent adoption in same-sex couples. The judgment was taken by a majority of 10 against 7. The applicant family have been represented by ECSOL-co-coordinator Dr. Helmut Graupner. For details, for the full text of the judgment and for the webcast of the two oral hearings see: www.echr.coe.int