The message from the East meets West Co-founders
With entering the year 2025, we are writing our usual "Message from the Co-founders". This time perhaps few more lines and more personal writing of Ludo and by Pavel that reflects the past year. Ludo writes about the changing world around us, Pavel on rainbow families.
Ludo on the changing world around us
Looking back at 2024, it was for me, Ludo, one of the 2 East meets West Founders, a strange year. It was a year when I realised fully that no longer living on site in Vienna and not often meeting our people from the CEE region had become a challenge. I know that in the digital era, the distance is no longer an issue but still… But after the same time I realised that it also offered a big, new opportunity. Time and distance allowed me to have a more high level view of what was happening in the LGBTIQ community. The masses of articles and reports gave me after a while a clearer insight on from where the new a wind is blowing andit was not good news. East meets West had been used to work in a positive and open environment with mutual respect but now we saw that insulting language, when talking about our community had become fashionable and was considered ok. This change finds its origin in the increased number of right wing populistic parties that attack our community with false information and lies. Frightening, no?
Another question popped up regularly: how stable are the past accomplishments of the LGBTIQ community in the different countries and regions. Have they really reached their goals? When a country signs an international convention, aimed at the ending LGBTIQ legal discriminations, are these engagements also really lived in the daily life or are these just letters on paper? Can all citizens of these countries enforce their rights in court? This could be a valid topic to follow up for East meets West.
And then recently I saw more and more large US corporates decreasing their support for DEI initiatives. The official justification seems to be an U.S. Supreme Court decision from July 2023 that outlawed affirmative action in college admissions. But it also makes clear that for more and more people businesses should only focus on business goals and a company has in fact no reason to have DEI values in their DNA. Not necessary to say also this can have in our region a large impact.
So you see, we were not hibernating in 2024 but East meets West defined possible new focus points to bring the East closer to the West and vice versa!
Pavel on rainbow families
The wide public knows East meets West for the many years of LGBTIQ advocacy in Central & Eastern Europe, and this mainly in the business environment. This focus broadened back in 2020 and started to include running after the challenges faced by rainbow families, the year that one of EmW's co-founders became a father. Might not be too hard to guess it is me, Pavel... and who also writes this second part of the personal Message from the Co-founders.
Our adoption process turned into a three-year legal battle but early 2024 came the breakthrough. The Austrian court finally recognised us as the fathers of our daughter who is with us from her third day of life. The feelings when the new birth certificate arrived, with both our names in, are hard to describe. But the most emotional moment was back in 2020 when we received a first call from the social workers, when we met our very precious girl for the very first time in the hospital and when we all three the next day arrived to our home.
This time, the feeling was about a relief after a three-year legal battle escalating up to the Austrian Constitutional Court that did cost us unimaginable amount of energy and patience. This grueling process, however, has resulted not only in a personal victory - it was a victory for all rainbow families in Austria. It became a precedent case and same-sex residents in Austria can now adopt in the country, even without holding the Austrian citizenship (eg. in our case Czech and Slovak).
To make the story complete, it took us another few months to get our daughter a valid citizenship. The Slovak government, to real sadness of my husband Laco, turned their back on us. Reading a refusal that defined our request as "against morals", brought the feeling of being second class citizen very very close. The Austrian Federal Ministry of Interior not offered helping hand either, trying to evade the possibility of issuing a foreign passport. An acceptable solution came from the Czech Republic where I was at least recognised at least as a single father. Finally after four years of growing up in our family, our girl is getting an identity document and passport.
There is a point worth putting forward after what we have been through. Is there a real equality among its citizens in Europe, more precisely in the European Union? Our story clearly shows a different reality from what many can perceive on the streets in summer months. People have lives and their challenges that go way beyond the single day of rainbow explosion in the streets. It is important, in my opinion, to share personal stories and to make them heard. And it is still about role-models. With the right impulse, every person can become one!
To celebrate our achievement, I reserved last year six months solely for my family. We packed our bags, and as a family of four we travelled across 12 countries in Europe and that all in a very intimate manner. We became nomads and in space of 12 sq.m. (VW Cali) enjoyed a dream that many cannot ever live through. I am about to write a blog to pass such memories on and give inspiration to anyone close to make a similar great decision (stay tuned).
The East meets West Pages
We know you might miss our East meets West Pages, the unique overview of what went on in Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) LGBTIQ universe in the past year, or in other words, our yearly newsletter. Instead, we offer you something even better, a global picture on what happened around LGBTIQ D&I. It is the quality Fabrice Houdart's weekly Newsletter on LGBTIQ+ Equality. And next to the Global (including the CEE region), Fabrice also looks at what is happening with the LGBTIQ representation in the Boardrooms of the Corporate players - he shares news on the gay business world and even ads a semi-cultural desk – every time you read Fabrice's Newsletter, you are up to date! And guess what, he keeps all the weekly digests online, all under https://fabricehoudart.substack.com.