Introduction
In 2026, the European External Action Service (2026) stated “The European Union and the five Central Asian countries share a commitment to peace, prosperity, stability and security.” On April 4, 2025, at the first EU–Central Asia Summit in Samarkand, the EU had already announced its commitment to a strategic partnership with the five countries of Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The region has significant transcontinental trade routes, massive hydrocarbon and critical mineral reserves that turn railways and pipelines into strategic policy tools. In times of reduced reliability in transatlantic relations, Central Asia gains importance for the EU while Russia and China continue to compete for influence in the region (Giritlioglu, 2025; LSE, 2026). On the one hand, Russia retains leverage through security ties, economic networks, language, media, and Soviet-era institutions, while China has become a major source of trade, credit, infrastructure, and energy investment. On the other hand, the latter’s economic prominence has not automatically produced public or normative influence, while Russia’s embedded position has been impacted by its war against Ukraine (Krapohl and Vasileva-Dienes, 2020; Dadabaev and Sonoda, 2023; Sim and Aminjonov, 2024; Rashidov et al., 2024; Vanderhill, Joireman, and Tulepbayeva, 2025). The European Union, from its beginning in 1951 with the foundation of the European Community for Steel and Coal, has been a dynamic cooperation culminating in the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009 with a commitment to the values stipulated in Article 2 TEU, that inform Union policies and play a role in the Union’s international partnerships. These considerations have implications for the future of the EU’s partnership with Central Asia.
Union Values and the Supranational Order
The Union’s Article 2 values – comprising respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities – must be complied with – whenever Union law is applied (Pernice, 2008). Mechanisms such as the conditionality of the disbursement of the budget, preliminary rulings and infringement procedures, as well as the Article 7 procedure, which allows for the sanctioning of Member States that violate Article 2, ensure that Union law can be enforced. Just recently, the Court of Justice of the EU reaffirmed the commitment to these values in the landmark decision European Commission v Hungary (C-769/22). Yet, democratic backsliding, defined as “deliberate, intended action designed to gradually undermine the fundamental rules of the game in an existing democracy, carried out by a democratically elected government” (Bakke & Sitter, 2020) challenges the application of EU law. Poland’s last parliamentary election ended years of democratic backsliding in 2023, while other EU Member States have continued their respective policies (Guardian, 2026). In Central Asia, authoritarian resilience persists as elite cohesion, limited civic leverage, and external backing from major powers like Russia and China challenge Union values (Nurdilda, 2025). How can the new partnership between Central Asia and the EU retain its legitimacy? How can it be accepted by the people of each region –if its core values are questioned by the states that comprise its subjects? A closer look at the increasing value of gender equality in the EU can help one find an answer.
Gender Equality in the European Union
Gender equality in the EU has been impacted by different frameworks of action. The European Commission states the goal of “[p]romoting equal economic independence for women and men, closing the gender pay gap, advancing gender balance in decision making, ending gender based violence and promoting gender equality beyond the EU”. In 1957, Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome demanded equal pay for men and women for equal work. Yet, in the 1970s, the law was still based on binary gender constructs. It focused on women’s rights and scarcely questioned the heteronormative relationship model. The legal framework was defined by the status of women in relation to that of men, which at times led to the arbitrary treatment of women under European law. Their protection justified the exclusion of female police officers from special units in 1986 (C-222/84) and from the Royal Marines in 1999 (C-273/97). In 1986, discrimination against part-time employees could be established only if the group of disadvantaged employees consisted predominantly of women (C-170/84). Traditional gender roles were reinforced by the fact that men were denied access to traditionally female occupations, such as the midwife (C-165/82). Member States were allowed to grant access to corporate kindergarten spots only for children of female employees (C-476/99). Since the famous Hofmann case of 1984 the CJEU has reaffirmed that statutory maternity leave constitutes a justified exception of the principle of equal treatment (C-184/83, C-463/19). It recently stated that a collective agreement may reserve an additional period of leave exclusively for single mothers and exclude single fathers (C-463/19). Since August 2, 2022, the Work-Life-Balance Directive 2019/1158 has granted gender-neutral parental leave in conjunction with social benefits. In 2000, the Federal Republic of Germany amended the Basic Law following the Kreil case (C-285/98), thereby allowing women to serve in the Bundeswehr. In 1997, the Part-Time-Work Directive 97/81/EC broke new ground by no longer differentiating female and male part-time work. The CJEU followed suit and established that part-time employees would be compared to full-time employees regardless of gender (C-395/08 & C-396/08, C-184/22 & C-185/22). Directive (EU) 2022/2381 mandates quotas for corporate board membership of large publicly listed companies. It stipulates that 33% of all board roles (executive and non-executive combined) must go to the underrepresented sex, while at least 40% of the underrepresented gender must be represented in non-executive boards of listed companies. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with fewer than 250 employees are exempt. As of 2026, the average value of female representation in presidents, board members, and employee representation in the EU is 36% (EIGE 2026a). Yet, these values differ between Member States with France currently leading corporate female representation at 46.6.%, followed by Italy at 45.2%. Hungarian corporate boards show 13.1% of female representation, with Cyprus presenting the lowest value at 9%. All other European Member States, except Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Luxembourg, have registered higher values of representation in 2026 compared to the values presented in 2022, when the directive was adopted. (EIGE 2026a).
Since the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009, EU gender equality jurisprudence has changed significantly. The Charter of Fundamental Rights became legally binding, mandating that fundamental rights and the values of Article 2 are to be respected whenever Union law is implemented. First and foremost, this is the case in the context of the Internal Market where the freedom of goods, capital, people, and services must be applied (Art. 3 TEU). This economic regime provides the structural conditions for a more gender-neutral supranational legal order based on citizenship rights (Art. 20 TFEU) rather than on gender equality provisions. The judgments in Coman (C-673/16), Mirin (C‑4/23), and Shipova (C-43/24) illustrate this shift: rather than technocratically applying the principle of equal pay, the judgments reorient EU equality law towards ensuring that the Internal Market is accessible to all citizens, which has implications for gendered systems of behavior in all spheres of life. In Coman (C-673/16), the Court held that a Member State must recognise a same-sex marriage lawfully concluded in another Member State for the purpose of granting a derived right of residence to the non-EU spouse of a Union citizen who has exercised their freedom of movement. This obligation does not require Member States to introduce same-sex marriage into their own national law, but a refusal to grant residence rights solely based on the non-recognitiion of same-sex marriage domestically does not comply with EU standards. In Mirin (C‑4/23), the CJEU stipulated that Articles 20 TFEU and 21(1) TFEU require a Member State to recognise a change of first name and gender identity lawfully obtained by one of its citizens in another Member State while exercising their freedom of movement. States must permit that change to be recorded in the person’s birth certificate and cannot require them to initiate fresh judicial proceedings in their Member State of origin to obtain recognition. In Shipova (C-43/24) the Court held that EU law precludes national legislation that prevents a Member State from amending the gender-related information in the civil status records of a citizen who has exercised their freedom of movement in the EU.
The CJEU’s recent case law can be understood as a step towards limiting the legal significance of gender norms. With Judith Butler, gender can be understood as “the apparatus by which the production and normalization of masculine and feminine take place along with the interstitial forms of hormonal, chromosomal, psychic, and performative that gender assumes” (Butler, 2004). Gender norms, then, constitute expectations and categories through which gender identities are produced, regulated, and standardized. This definition moves beyond the biological distinctions and emphasises normative dimensions. In that spirit, the Court, rather than comparing men and women and their eligibility for EU rights, has increasingly focused on the individual’s status as an EU citizen and ensuring effective access to the rights associated with that status. While this approach clearly constitutes a step towards a non-gendered perspective whenever Union activities are concerned (Art. 8 TFEU), it comes with limits: where policies remain within Member State competence, divergent national rules continue to determine the practical conditions under which gender identity is recognised, thereby preventing a fully coherent application of the EU’s commitment to equality. This constitutes a limit of value-application within the Internal Market.
Furthermore, the coherent application of the Union value of gender equality is limited when political representation is concerned (Gender Equality Index, 2026) and different political systems across Member States lead to different outcomes. National elections are, in contrast to the Internal Market, strictly a national competency. Elections to the European Parliament (although Member States adhere to a set of common EU-wide principles) also follow distinct national procedures. The share of female members of national parliaments across the European Union averages at 34.2% (EIGE, 2026b) while the share of female members in national parliaments varies, from 48% in Denmark (EIGE, 2026b) and 46% in Finland ((EIGE, 2026b) to 22.7% in Romania (EIGE, 2026b) and 19.6% in Cyprus (EIGE, 2026b). Female representation in the European Parliament is equally diverse. Yet, the overall female share in the European Parliament of 39.1% (EIGE, 2026c) is slightly higher than the average national share in EU Member States. In 17 Member States, female representation in the European Parliament outperforms national Parliamentary representation. These are Germany, France, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, Belgium, Czechia, Greece, Hungary, Portugal, Sweden, Austria, Finland, Slovakia, Ireland, Croatia, and Luxembourg. Sweden stands on top of the chart at 61.9% in the third quarter of 2026, while Lithuania (18.2%), Malta (16.7%), and Cyprus (0.0%) do not surpass the 20% mark (EIGE, 2026c). These numbers concerning political representation reflect divergent national political systems, different approaches to gender equality policies, and dissimilar gender norms. They impact the unionwide application of equality and, consequently, input and output legitimacy (Scharpf, 2003), as well as the notion of free deliberation among political equals (Cohen, 1989; Manin, 1987). In other words, who contributes to preference formation and who benefits from the policies thereby formed? Different levels of democratic legitimacy constitute the result of these unequal conditions of political participation across the Union although gender composition does not allow us to draw conclusions about the substance of the policies resulting from a certain participatory constellation.
A Dynamic Concept
The extent to which Union values, including gender equality, can be applied and enforced coherently in the EU varies from Member State to Member State. This nationally determined limitation operates on two levels. First, even within the Internal Market, national rules may impede the effective exercise of rights derived from the four freedoms. In the field of gender equality, for example, national rules governing legal gender recognition and medical treatment can affect an individual’s access to free movement and other Internal Market rights. Second, in areas that remain primarily within national competence—such as the organisation of the state itself, the structure of political institutions, and the administration of elections—EU values do not apply with the same directness or uniformity. Approaches to gender equality in these areas will therefore continue to diverge among Member States.
A fully coherent conception of gender equality across the Union is consequently unlikely to emerge, and Union citizens will continue to experience different rights and opportunities depending on their Member State. Nevertheless, within the scope of its competences, the EU has expanded access to and participation in the Internal Market by progressively integrating gender equality into Union law. This competence-based and necessarily differentiated model can also inform the EU’s engagement with Central Asia. Rather than requiring the convergence of national governance systems, the partnership can build on shared values through those fields in which cooperation is both legally possible and mutually accepted. The division of competences may therefore limit coherence, but it also permits a dynamic and open form of values-based partnership—one that promotes gender equality while leaving room for distinct national institutions and paths of development.
