Are the European Green Party and Croatian Party We Can! advocating for decriminalization of sex with minors? No, that's not true: There is no evidence or record that the European Green Party or their new member from Croatia, the party We Can!, advocates lowering the minimum age for sexual consent to 12 years.
The claim appeared on TikTok in a video (archived here) by @sjprh (archived here) on March 1, 2024. It was captioned (translated from Croatian to English by Lead Stories staff):
Here is the proof that the We Can! (Možemo!) party is one of the Green parties that, among other things, advocates for the law to introduce that it is not pedophilia if you have sexual relations with children aged 12. Some EU countries have already implemented this.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Mar 6 13:55:07 2024 UTC)
The video shows the beginning of the original video (archived here) on TikTok from the official profile (archived here) of the We Can!/Možemo party (archived here) published on February 4, 2024, after they joined the European Green Party at its Extended Congress in Lyon, France (archived here). In the video, the party's co-presidents, Member of Parliament Sandra Benčić and Tomislav Tomašević, the mayor of Zagreb, address their voters.
What @sjrph uses is an already edited video footage (archived here) by the TikTok account @nemozemo1 (archived here) or "@we can not1" (as translated) on February 7, 2024. Below that video, with defamatory statements about We Can!, it was captioned:
Congratulations to the liars on this enormous achievement for humanity.
This fact check will focus only on the claims added by user @sjrph about advocating for the legalization of pedophilia or the decriminalization of sex with minors.
In Lyon, 40 Green parties endorsed the European Green Party's common manifesto, Courage to Change (archived here), for the election campaign and the next European Parliament legislature. The European Green Party manifesto (archived here), adopted every five years, functions as a basis to further the common Green agenda during European Parliament election campaigns. The Manifesto's 2024 priorities (archived here) do not include lowering the minimum age for sexual consent to 12 years. There is no record that the European Green Party during the 21st century or We Can! party, since its establishment in 2019, have advocated for the decriminalization of sex with minors.
The second claim, that some EU countries have already lowered the age of consent to 12, is also inaccurate. According to data from the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (archived here), most member states set a minimum age for sexual consent between 14 and 16 years (archived here). The lowest minimum age is 14, set in seven states: Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Portugal. The highest is set at 18 in Malta.
Benčić (archived here) is We Can!'s candidate for prime minister in the upcoming early parliamentary elections (archived here); the left party is the opposition to the ruling Croatian Democratic Union. TikTok videos are just the beginning of the election campaign in Croatia.
