Four countries on the EU's new safe list still jail people over same-sex conduct

The European Union has put four countries that imprison people over same-sex conduct on its first common list of safe countries of origin.

On 10 February 2026 the European Parliament voted 408 to 184, with 60 abstentions, to endorse the list, and 396 to 226, with 30 abstentions, to approve the companion rules on safe third countries. Both figures come from the Parliament's press release of that date. The seven countries named are Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Kosovo, Morocco and Tunisia. Accession candidates are presumed safe as well, unless armed conflict, an EU wide recognition rate above 20 per cent, or sanctions over fundamental rights indicate otherwise. Human Rights Watch, writing the same day, counted Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Serbia and Turkiye among those caught by that presumption.

A listing reverses the expectation. The Parliament's text states that it will be for the individual applicant to prove that the presumption should not apply, because of a well founded fear of persecution or a risk of serious harm on return. The European Union Agency for Asylum records the instrument as Regulation (EU) 2026/464, adopted in February 2026 and in application from 12 June 2026, and records only one exclusion from the safe designation: Ukraine, taken out because of continued armed conflict.

Four of the seven listed countries punish same-sex conduct. The Human Dignity Trust records Tunisia's article 230 of the 1913 penal code, three years' imprisonment, applying to women as well as men, with the local organisation Damj counting about 1,458 convictions since 2011 and at least 71 arrests in October 2025, of whom 32 had been sentenced to terms of eight months to three years. Morocco's article 489 of the 1962 penal code carries three years and a fine; the United States State Department reported 441 prosecutions in the first half of 2023 alone. Bangladesh keeps section 377 of the 1860 penal code, with life imprisonment as the maximum, formally used rarely but available as a pretext: four medical students were detained in Dhaka in April 2026 and held for 15 days. Egypt has no statute that names homosexuality, and instead prosecutes under article 9 of Law 10 of 1961 on debauchery, carrying up to three years, with more than 50 people charged across at least eight cases in 2023.

Six months before the vote, the Court of Justice of the European Union had said this could not be done. In its Grand Chamber judgment of 1 August 2025 in joined cases C-758/24 and C-759/24, brought by two Bangladeshi men taken to the Italian detention centre in Albania, the Court held that a member state may not include a country on a safe list if that country does not offer adequate protection to its entire population. Building on its earlier ruling in CV of 4 October 2024, the Court said that designation with exceptions for clearly identifiable categories of persons is not possible under the directive then in force, but that the replacement regulation, which does allow such exceptions, would apply from 12 June 2026, and that the legislature was free to bring that date forward.

It did. The Parliament's press release confirms that the provision permitting designation with exceptions for parts of a territory or for clearly identifiable categories of persons, along with accelerated border procedures for nationalities with recognition rates under 20 per cent, can apply before the rest of the asylum package.

The asylum agency's own case law fact sheet, published in September 2025, is blunt about why that power exists. Article 61 of the Asylum Procedures Regulation allows group and territorial exceptions, it says, because in many countries deemed safe specific groups can still face persecution or ill treatment, such as LGBTIQ persons. The same fact sheet records that of 23 EU and associated countries with national safe lists, seven applied exceptions for particular profiles, and that after the August judgment the Netherlands announced it would strike Armenia, Brazil, Ghana, Jamaica, Morocco, Senegal, Serbia and Tunisia from its list. By the agency's own survey of January to June 2026, the Dutch list was suspended, Croatia had stopped applying its own, and 20 countries still maintained lists covering 54 third countries, most of them designated by three states or fewer.

The two rapporteurs framed the vote as clarity. Alessandro Ciriani called the list a political turning point that brings the period of ambiguity to an end. Lena Dupont said manifestly unfounded applications could now be rejected more quickly, sparing people years of legal limbo. Judith Sunderland of Human Rights Watch, the same day, said the changes jeopardise the right to seek asylum and impose a higher burden of proof on people fleeing persecution.

What is not known is whether the exception power will be used for the people it was written for. Neither the Parliament's account of the vote nor the agency's summary of Regulation (EU) 2026/464 records any carve out for LGBTIQ applicants from any of the seven countries. The Court has separately held, since its 2013 ruling in X, Y and Z, that criminalisation alone is not persecution, but that actual imprisonment under such a law is. Whether an applicant from Tunis or Casablanca can now show that in an accelerated border procedure, and how many will be returned before a court can look, will not be visible until the first appeals are decided.