Promoting LGBTIQ+ rights across Europe!
Get to know us
We promote LGBTIQ+ equality and representation both within the Party of European Socialists and outside it.
We work closely with our member organisations, their members and elected representatives at a local, national and European level, to strengthen the commitment to LGBTIQ+ rights within our own sister parties and governments of which we are a part.
We want our political parties to have strong positions on LGBTI equality and to translate this into laws where we are in positions of power at a local, national and international level. We want our representatives to place a higher priority on LGBTIQ+ issues in national and foreign policies and to increase pressure on all countries to introduce rights and protections for LGBTIQ+ citizens.
We campaign for our own political family to be progressive, forward thinking and outward looking on LGBTIQ+ issues and we will work with activists and NGOs to support their efforts in Europe and beyond to achieve equality and live free from discrimination.
We actively contribute to LGBTIQ+ conferences, pride marches and events, and support our LGBTIQ+ NGOs in every corner of Europe. We are members of ILGA Europe, work with the ERA by participating in their conferences, form part of the annual Europride programme of activities, and much more.
Get to know our members
Who We Are
The Board of Rainbow Rose is comprised of 9 members, elected for two year terms at our General Assembly.
The sovereign body of Rainbow Rose is the General Assembly, which meets every year. This is comprised of Full Member organisations, Associate Members, Observer Members, and Rainbow Rose Individual Members.
Board Members
Dajana Bakic - President
Newly elected as President of Rainbow Rose, following 2 years as Vice President and 2 years as a board member, Dajana has a background in LGBTI advocacy in her native Bosnia and Herzegovina. She currently works for the Sarajevo Open Centre, and was one of the founding committee members for Bosnia and Herzegovina Pride, holding their first pride parade in the Capital, Sarajevo, in 2019. She is an active member of SDP Bosnia & Herzegovina.
Ian Dylan Thomas - Secretary General
Ian has been on the Board of Rainbow Rose since 2018, first as a member then two terms as Vice President. He was the Co-Chair of LGBT+ Labour 2015 and 2018, having joined their committee in 2016, and has led their elections campaigns to support LGBTI candidates at all levels of government.
Ian has worked as a political organiser for the Labour Party within his home region in north Wales, and has worked in the UK Parliament since 2011, and is the Head of Office for a London Labour MP.
Carola Ebhardt - Treasurer
The current Treasurer of Rainbow Rose, Carola has served on the Board as a Vice President for four years and a board member prior to that. Carola is the Co-Chair of SPDqueer, the LGBTI organisation that is part of the SPD in Germany. Carola sat on the Equality Committee during the coalition agreements with the Greens and FDP, following the elections in 2021. Carola was a long serving member of the Hamburg Pride Committee.
Sam Van de Putte - Vice President
As representative of Vooruit, Sam has been one of the people who restarted the Rainbow Rose Network during EuroPride in Marseille back in 2013. He’s now one of the Vice Presidents and has served as Treasurer four years before. Sam loves to take the lead in our joint delegations with PES to Baltic-& EuroPride. He has a lot of contacts within the LGBTI+ community and is elected in the city council of his hometown Aalst since 2007.
Marene Elgershuizen - Vice President
Marene is a life-long progressive, feminist and thus social-democrat. She is a historian, policy officer on Feminist Foreign Policy and member of several supervisory and advisory boards. During her studies she mainly focused on New Wars, genocides, ethnic conflicts, post-conflict situations and the Responsibility to Protect. She has also done research into women Members of Parliament in the 1980s and their influence on Dutch political culture. Within the Dutch Labour Party, Marene is an elected delegate to PES.
Sebastian Pay - Vice President
Since 2023 Sebastian serves as one of the Vice-President’s of Rainbow Rose. He lives in Vienna and is working as a parliamentary advisor for equality, diversity and LGBTIQ+ in the Austrian Parliament, as well as serving as Secretary General of SoHo, the Austrian social-democratic LGBTIQ+ movement. By education Sebastian has studied history and human rights law and is currently working on his doctorate focusing on the political impacts of human rights activism.
Jessica Ekerbring - Board Member
New on our Board since May 2023 is Jessica Ekerbring, a municipal commissioner within the Social Democratic Party of Sweden. She´s an experienced politician and has been responsible for everything from school and education issues to social welfare issues in her home city of Örebro, Sweden.
Besides being a fulltime politician she has also been a member of the National Board of HBTQ+Socialdemokrater, the LGBTI organisation within the party, since 2019 where she has been focusing mostly on international work and networking.
Victor Gutierrez Santiago - Vice President
Victor’s biography is forthcoming.
Statutes and Rules of Procedure
You can find our Statutes and Rule of Procedure, our constitutional document that governs how our organisation is run, by clicking the button opposite.
PES and Rainbow Rose LGBTIQ+ Road Map
You can find our landmark PES and LGBTIQ+ Road Map, adopted by the PES Presidency in 2017, that guides our two organisations towards LGBTIQ+-inclusive parties and movement, by clicking the button opposite.