European Court fines Romania for not recognizing the gender of two transgender people

The European Court of Human Rights offices

 Romania refused to recognize the gender identity of the two transgender people on the grounds that they had not undergone gender change surgery.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has sentenced Romania in this case.

The Strasbourg-based court on January 19th ruled that the Romanian state violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which upholds "the right to respect for private and family life", and ordered the country to pay a total of almost 26,000 euros as indemnity.

The complainants, whom this court had named as X and Y, are Romanian nationals who were born in 1976 and 1982 respectively and were registered as daughters at birth, as Radio Free Europe reports.

X moved to the UK in 2014 and took on the male gender name after Romanian courts refused to change his gender.

Y was provided with a new Romanian identity card in 2018 recognizing his masculinity, but only after undergoing surgery last year.

The ECHR said in a statement that although these individuals did not wish to undergo the operation, the Romanian national courts "faced them with an impossible dilemma: either they had to undergo the operation… or they had to give up their gender identity".

The court said Romania's stance put them in a situation of "humiliation and anxiety".