“LGBT laws alone are not a measure of equality”: Dr Koen Slootmaeckers wins European Union Studies Association Best Book Prize 2025

The European Union Studies Association (EUSA) awarded Dr Koen Slootmaeckers the EUSA Best Book Prize 2025 for his book Coming in: Sexual Politics and EU Accession in Serbia.

A Reader in International Politics at City St George’s, University of London, Dr Slootmaeckers combines sociology and political science to research gender and sexuality politics in Europe.

LGBT+ rights have increasingly become part of the litmus test for “Europeanness” in the process by which countries are denied or approved to join the European Union.

Serbia has been a candidate to join the European Union (EU) since 2007, and the book investigates the role of LGBT rights in its accession process, and the concept of “tactical Europeanisation”.

The veneer of progress and Serbia’s sexuality politics

The book asks critical questions about what we conceive as progress in human rights issues.

Dr Slootmaeckers carried out extensive fieldwork to write the book, including observing Pride parades and social movements in government bodies.

He found Serbian activists used the examples of current pro-LGBT laws in the EU to push for progress in the country.

He interrogated whether adopting new laws and policies around LGBTQIA+ issues – like equal marriage, anti-workplace discrimination policies and child adoption – can really be seen as progress, or if this is simply the veneer of progress.

“While important, these laws should never be taken as a measure for equality,” Dr Slootmaeckers argues. “We need more attention to how politics are played on the back of marginalised people, and how measures that are meant to liberate us may actually become tools to keep us in the closet.”

It is this critical approach that won over the EUSA jury. A spokesperson for the award said:

Coming In shows how EU human rights norms and values are perceived, translated, and deployed by government institutions and LGBTQIA+ activists in Serbia.

Looking at the EU from Serbia reveals how accession requirements around human rights take on different meanings when implemented locally.

Serbian LGBTQIA+ activists use EU norms as leverage for domestic change. Government actors reinterpret these same norms to minimize their domestic impact.

This ground-level view exposes the gap between formal compliance with EU standards and meaningful social change in ways that reshape our understanding of how EU enlargement actually works.

History presents opportunities to learn, and telling the history of those who have been traditionally erased from history provides us with ways to challenge what we take for granted and allows us to imagine different ways of relating to each other.

The vicious attacks on LGBTQIA+ rights across the board, the viciousness of anti-trans politics that we see today only showcase how important it is to remember the place queer people have in history as well as knowing the history of the struggle towards equality.

In times where we see LGBTQIA+ rights and gender equality attacked from various political sources, it means the world to me to be recognised for the work I have done to try and shed light on the different ways in which LGBTQIA+ rights have been instrumentalised within European politics.

I dedicated the book to all those in Serbia who work towards LGBTQIA+ equality, and for me, this award is a testament to their never-ending work. I always aspire to do justice to their stories and this award has only become possible due to the generosity of their time and energy that allowed me to think with them.