European Pride Organizers Association (EPOA), logo

Moving Baltics in Pride – Lithuanian Gay League joins EPOA

In July LGL became a member of the European Pride Organizers Association (EPOA) , which is a network of European LGBT  Pride organizations. EPOA was founded in 1992 and it holds the rights to the title of EuroPride. The organization aims to promote lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Pride on a pan-European level and to empower and support local and national pride organizations in their efforts of planning and promoting pride celebrations. The next goal of EPOA is to establish and facilitate networking and skill-sharing among members of this European platform.
EuroPride was inaugurated in London in 1992, attended by estimated crowds of over 100,000. Then during next twenty years a lot of European cities got the chance to become a host city of the EuroPride:  Berlin (1993), Amsterdam (1994), Copenhagen (1996), Paris (1997), Stockholm (1998), Vienna ( 2001), Köln (2002) Manchester (2003), Hamburg (2004), Oslo (2005), London (2006), Madrid (2007), Stockholm (2008), Zurich (2009). The 2010 event was held in Warsaw.
In 2011 Rome held a great event culminating with one million participants in the parade, June 11th. The closing ceremony included a speech and a performance of Lady GaGa. LGL members participated in the march and Vladimir Simonko gave a speech at human rights workshop at Pride park organized by Amnesty International Italy.  In 2012 London hosted WorldPride and there was no license for EuroPride this year. In year 2013 host of EuroPride will be the city of Marseille.