When German historian Rainer Zitelmann reposted a photo of Adolf Hitler to warn against appeasing Russian President Vladimir Putin, he didn’t expect it to trigger a police probe. According to police, the problem was the image itself: Hitler was shown wearing a swastika armband — a banned symbol under Germany’s criminal code, which prohibits the public display of Nazi and other extremist insignia. Zitelmann was informed in February that authorities were examining the case. Zitelmann’s is just one of several recent investigations into online speech, which have raised questions about how far German authorities are going in enforcing strict speech laws — and whether efforts to curb extremism are colliding with satire and political criticism. Zitelmann said he posted the image as a warning, not an endorsement. Like Hitler, Putin cannot be trusted when he says he has no further territorial ambitions. “I’m usually against Hitler analogies,” he said. “They’re often inaccurate and used to discredit political opponents.”  But, he added, ”the parallels practically impose themselves.” A week earlier, a journalist found himself in a similar situation for mocking the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.  In a podcast, Jan Fleischhauer suggested the party’s youth wing, known as “Generation Germany,” might be better named “Generation Germany awake” — a reference to a banned Nazi slogan. Fleischhauer’s case comes after police had searched conservative commentator Norbert Bolz’s home in October for using the same slogan to mock a left-wing newspaper that had called for the AfD to be banned. “A good translation for ‘woke’: Germany awake!” Bolz had written. Fleischhauer reacted to his investigation with humor. “Maybe [the complaint was filed] … by an AfD supporter who was annoyed that I made fun of the AfD youth wing,” he said.  But, he warned, such cases risk chilling free speech. Jan Fleischhauer at the 69th Frankfurt Book Fair in Frankfurt am Main in October 2017. | Frank May/picture alliance via Getty Images “I come from the 1968 generation,” Fleischhauer said. “I thought the path of free speech had been cleared once and for all by the ’68 movement. But as we can see, all of that can be rolled back.” TRADEOFF The cases highlight a tension at the heart of Germany’s postwar legal order: how to guard against extremism without restricting free expression. After World War II, lawmakers — encouraged by the occupying Allied powers — moved swiftly to ban symbols of the country’s Nazi past, seeking to prevent fascism from reasserting itself. Critics now argue authorities are going too far. Wolfgang Kubicki, deputy leader of the pro-business Free Democrats, wants the law scrapped or narrowed. “If one wants to keep it, it would have to be limited strictly to explicit endorsement of National Socialist ideology,” he said. “At the moment, it has become vague and ill-defined. The legislature urgently needs to change that.” But others warn that loosening the rules could embolden extremists.  Lena Gumnior speaks to MPs in the plenary chamber of the German Bundestag on May 16, 2025. | Katharina Kausche/picture alliance via Getty Images “The point is not to allow governments to suppress political expression, but rather to protect the principles of our liberal constitution,” said Lena Gumnior, a Green lawmaker. “It is about strictly prohibiting the use of unconstitutional symbols, particularly those associated with National Socialism, in order to protect our democracy.” A separate provision of Germany’s criminal code — which designates it an offense to insult or belittle a politician — also sparked controversy recently. In January, a retiree came under investigation after posting a Facebook comment about Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s visit to his town: “Pinocchio is coming,” he wrote, adding a long-nose “lying” emoji.  That case drew the attention of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, prompting a a post by Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers, who has taken a strong stance against European laws that regulate online speech. “Most Germans I’ve talked to don’t want their laws applied this way,” she wrote. “When you’re regulating speech at scale, on platforms based in America (whose American users, especially, deserve First Amendment protection), this creates problems worth solving.” German authorities have dropped the probes into Fleischhauer and the Pinocchio emoji. The investigation into Zitelmann was still open as of Friday. For Matthias Cornils, a law professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, the outcome matters more than the investigations themselves. “Courts often reject criminal liability, even in quite harsh cases,” he said. “The strong constitutional protection of freedom of expression, developed over decades, remains intact.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán paid his respects to the actor Chuck Norris, who died Friday at the age of 86. A day after a bruising summit of European leaders in Brussels, Orbán posted “Farewell, my friend” on social media alongside a video of the two men together. The video dates from November 2018 when Norris met Orbán in Budapest. In the clip, Orbán tells Norris he is “a street fighter basically, I’m not coming from the elite.” The Hungarian leader then takes the martial arts star to see Hungary’s anti-terrorism unit — “the toughest guys” — perform a series of suitably tough guy activities, prompting Norris to say: “I have seen training all over the world, and this is the best demonstration, the best I’ve seen.” On the same trip, Orbán told the American that “90 percent of the comments on me is negative … the liberals hate me.” “You’re like Trump,” Norris said. “A little bit more than that!” Orbán replied. Norris was a world karate champion who became a martial arts movie star in films such as “The Delta Force” as well as the TV series “Walker, Texas Ranger.” He was a high-profile Republican and endorsed Donald Trump during his 2016 election campaign, calling on “freedom-loving citizens” to “rally behind” Trump. Orbán was in Brussels Thursday and refused to budge when pressured by fellow EU leaders to change his stance on a €90 billion loan to Ukraine. “It is completely unacceptable what Hungary is doing,” European Council President António Costa said of Orbán’s position. Hungary goes to the polls for a national election on April 12. Also paying tribute to Norris was Germany’s Free Democratic Party, which tweeted: “Chuck Norris doesn’t die. The resurrection just wants to be thorough. We know what we’re talking about” — perhaps a reference to the FDP’s ailing fortunes of late (it has no seats in the German parliament after a disastrous 2025 election). Ferdinand Knapp contributed to this report.

FIFA chief Gianni Infantino reported Wednesday morning that he’d met with U.S. President Donald Trump and discussed Iran’s participation in the World Cup. “President Trump reiterated that the Iranian team is, of course, welcome to compete in the tournament in the United States,” Infantino said, following the meeting.  Iran qualified for the 2026 World Cup, to be hosted this summer in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and is scheduled to play three group-stage games between Los Angeles and Seattle — but its participation has been thrown into doubt in recent weeks.  Trump, along with his Israeli allies, launched a military offensive against Iran late last month. Air strikes killed the Iranian supreme leader, but have failed to topple the regime and triggered regional drone-and-missile retaliation from Tehran. The war has also fueled a spike in oil prices, sparking concern over the global economy.  “We all need an event like the FIFA World Cup to bring people together now more than ever, and I sincerely thank the President of the United States for his support, as it shows once again that Football Unites the World,” Infantino added.  Infantino, who has been head of world football’s governing body since 2016, awarded Trump the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize in December last year.  Unveiling the honor, the governing body said it would “reward individuals who have taken exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace and by doing so have united people across the world.”

Having ignited one world war, Franz Ferdinand is becoming embroiled in another escalating conflict. On Saturday, Alex Kapranos, frontman of the Glasgow band that took its name from the Austrian archduke whose murder was one of the key events leading to World War I, slammed the Israel Defense Forces for using the band’s song “Take Me Out” in a war video. The Israeli post is labeled “Operation Roaring Lion — this is how it’s done” and features conflict footage, such as bombs, planes and airstrikes. Kapranos wrote: “These warmongering murderers are using our music without our consent. This makes us both nauseous and furious. Kind of typical though, isn’t it? To strut up and take what isn’t theirs with a vile arrogance.” Last month, Israel and the U.S. launched joint strikes against Iran, killing the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, triggering retaliation from Tehran and setting off a broader regional conflict. Franz Ferdinand (the band) have long been political. In 2016, they released a track called “Demagogue” about the first U.S. presidential campaign by Donald Trump.

Georgios Samaras is an assistant professor of public policy at the School for Government, King’s College London. I’ve spent more than a year examining the media’s habit of using substitute labels instead of calling the far right what it is — and this practice is now everywhere. Newsrooms cycle through a growing list of alternative descriptors, usually in search of language that feels safer or less likely to trigger backlash: hard right, alt-right, new right, religious right, national conservative, traditionalist… The list keeps growing. This would matter less if any of these terms added clarity, but most do not. They’re vague, they aren’t grounded in political science research, and they blur ideology rather than naming it, only to leave readers with softer language that hides what these actors truly stand for. And there are grave consequences to this mainstreaming. Of course, none of this is new. Scholars of far-right mainstreaming, such as Katy Brown and Aurelien Mondon, have shown how buzzwords — especially “populism” — helped produce this kind of journalistic ambiguity. The far right understood this dynamic long ago and has been exploiting it with discipline. Many of these actors now routinely deem being described as “far right” as defamation, treating accurate political description as if it were a form of vilification. Instead, these parties— from Reform UK and France’s National Rally to Brothers of Italy and Alternative for Germany — are selling a self-proclaimed conservative vision that is wrapped in the language of common sense. Paired with promises of order and national renewal, this is the standard trick for presenting racist politics as natural, and smuggling some of the darkest ideas of the 1930s back into public life under the cover of murky policy language. Let’s take, for example, the concept of “remigration.” In political science, remigration refers to the forced removal of minorities, especially those of African and South Asian descent, through coercion, exclusion and mass displacement — it’s ethnic cleansing dressed up in bureaucratic language. But today this term is appearing across Western media with far too little scrutiny, often treated as just another hardline immigration policy in the far-right playbook. We can observe the same pattern being applied to the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which which purports that political and cultural elites are deliberately engineering demographic change by encouraging immigration and higher birth rates among non-white, non-Christian populations to displace white Christian Europeans. Claims that whole cities are being “lost” to Islam, “no-go zones” and “two-tier policing” myths; distortions around grooming scandals; and blatant lies about crime statistics are turning the conversation around migration into a permanent moral panic. While the effects of this are visible all across Europe, Britain’s Reform UK presents one of the clearest cases — not least because the party has been at the front of the line when it comes to legal threats and public pressure against media outlets for using established terms to describe its ideology. Alas, much of the media has also handed Reform UK an absurd amount of airtime. This party, with just eight members of parliament, is routinely given a platform to push extreme ideas with a free pass, while its figures pose as a government-in-waiting more than three years ahead of the U.K.’s next general election. This is exactly how someone like Reform UK policy head Zia Yusuf has become such a central figure. Not even an MP, Yusuf has been laying out his far-right vision in plain sight, getting it amplified nonstop. He has threatened mass deportations on a staggering scale — floating figures approaching 300,000 people a day — called for an end to “Indefinite Leave to Remain” when it comes to Brexit, and proposed an enforcement agency akin to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to carry it out. He has also boasted that Reform UK wouldn’t just leave the European Convention of Human Rights, but “derogate from every international agreement” standing in the way of its deportation agenda. But while these slogans play well on X and rack up thousands of likes, the second a journalist pushes back and calls this ideology what it is, the whole act falls apart — as when BBC presenter Victoria Derbyshire pressed Yusuf to name even one protected characteristic his party wanted to remove from the Equality Act, and he couldn’t name a single one. The ecosystem now has a global engine it would be naïve not to name — U.S. President Donald Trump. | Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images This interview showed exactly how little substance sits behind the political performance — and the vital importance of proper scrutiny. The problem is that moments like this are growing increasingly rare. The BBC’s reporting style, for example, is all too often shaped by internal guidelines and a collapsing vision of performative neutrality. This was clearly demonstrated in coverage of the death of 23-year-old Quentin Deranque in France two weeks ago, with a report that described Deranque as a “far-right feminist” — a phrase that invents a political category no serious politics course anywhere in the world would recognize. Far-right politics and feminism come from fundamentally different traditions and pursue fundamentally different aims. But this isn’t a one-off example. These aren’t isolated editorial lapses. They reflect a political climate that rewards euphemism and intimidation. And that ecosystem now has a global engine it would be naïve not to name — U.S. President Donald Trump. Last year I wrote in POLITICO that Trump wants to poison global political culture. What we’ve seen since is an effort to export a style that thrives on bullying journalists and steadily lowering standards, including those of political language. It’s a lesson that travels fast. His European counterparts are catching up. They now understand that these practices can pressure media organizations into softening their language and normalizing their presence. And with far-right parties topping the polls across so much of Europe, we’ve already passed the mainstreaming stage. Every uncritical mention of far-right rhetoric is an editorial decision with political consequences. Every headline, every clip, every click adds weight. This is how the line gets crossed. And how some media are no longer just covering the far right but helping it speak.

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Die Berlinale 2026 ist längst vorbei, aber die Debatte beginnt erst richtig. Antisemitismus-Vorwürfe, antiisraelische Töne und die Sorge vor einer politischer Vereinnahmung überschatten das Festival und dessen Zukunft. Rixa Fürsen über die Frage: Wie lassen sich Kunstfreiheit und Meinungsfreiheit mit der klaren Ächtung von Antisemitismus vereinbaren? Im 200-Sekunden-Interview geht es dann mit Katrin Göring-Eckardt (Grüne) ebenfalls um die Kontroverse: Was tun gegen einen augenscheinlich tief sitzenden Antisemitismus in Teilen der Kulturszene? Welche politischen Konsequenzen braucht es? Die AfD verbucht einen juristischen Teilerfolg. Das Verwaltungsgericht Köln untersagt dem Verfassungsschutz vorerst, die gesamte AfD als rechtsextremistisch einzustufen. Was bedeutet das praktisch für die Partei, für den Verfassungsschutz und für die politische Debatte? Einschätzungen dazu von Pauline von Pezold, Host unseres ⁠POLITICO-Podcasts „Inside AfD“⁠. Und zum Schluss: ein Blick in die „schwarz-gelbe“ Kartoffelküche. Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. ⁠Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren.⁠ Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon Repinski: Instagram: ⁠@gordon.repinski⁠ | X: ⁠@GordonRepinski⁠. POLITICO Deutschland – ein Angebot der Axel Springer Deutschland GmbH Axel-Springer-Straße 65, 10888 Berlin Tel: +49 (30) 2591 0 ⁠information@axelspringer.de⁠ Sitz: Amtsgericht Berlin-Charlottenburg, HRB 196159 B USt-IdNr: DE 214 852 390 Geschäftsführer: Carolin Hulshoff Pol, Mathias Sanchez Luna **(Anzeige) Eine Nachricht von Roche Deutschland: Deutschlands Zukunft entscheidet sich bei Innovation. Darum investieren wir heute Milliarden in Forschung, Produktion und Wertschöpfung in Deutschland – für Souveränität, Sicherheit und Unabhängigkeit. Denn klar ist: Wo Innovation ausgebremst wird, verliert eine Schlüsselindustrie an Tempo. Und Deutschland an gesunder Zukunft.**

ROME — Italy is mulling an audacious push to host the Summer Olympic Games. The successful Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics sparked a surge of national pride as pre-Games skepticism gave way to nationwide celebration. Flags appeared on balconies. Athletes became heroes. Italy raked in medals. For Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government, the Games offered a timely opportunity to project organizational nous and international soft power. The prime minister said the event had “displayed an image of beauty and competence to the world which has bestowed prestige upon the entire nation.” Almost as soon as the final medals were awarded, attention turned to a possible Summer Games in Rome in 2036 or 2040, despite a broader trend of countries declining to bid for the Olympics amid astronomical costs. Hosting the Summer Games is “a dream that we are all silently harboring,” Sports Minister Andrea Abodi admitted to reporters in Cortina. In 2016, Rome withdrew from the race to host the 2024 Summer Olympics due to concerns over debt and cost overruns. But Giovanni Malagò, head of the Milan-Cortina 2026 organizing committee, said the success of the Winter Games could “certainly” reopen Rome’s candidacy. It is premature to discuss it, Malagò said, “but Rome has two advantages, a unique history also as an Olympic city and extraordinary sports structures such as the Olympic Stadium.” Rome hosted the Olympics in 1960. Luciano Buonfiglio, president of the national Olympic Committee, said that Italy should capitalize on the Milan-Cortina momentum. “At a moment when we have international credibility, it is possible to build a strong bid,” he told Italian radio. The prospect is already rippling through domestic politics. Carlo Calenda, leader of the centrist Azione party, told POLITICO the Olympics would be “a positive thing” for Rome and could provide direction for the city’s development. While Rome still struggles with traffic and waste management, Calenda argued that hosting the Games would help long-term planning. The issue could electrify Rome’s 2027 mayoral race. Current Mayor Roberto Gualtieri told POLITICO the Games would give continuity to the transformation underway in the capital. “I am ready to do my part,” he said. Supporters such as Alessandro Onorato, Rome’s city councillor for sports and large events, are already sketching the imagery: athletes rowing on the Tiber, marathon runners finishing under Rome’s triumphal arches and fencers darting “in the shadow of the Colosseum,” while others such as former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi have piled in to pitch alternative host cities such as Florence and Venice. Supporters such as Alessandro Onorato, Rome’s city councillor for sports and large events, are already sketching the imagery. | Andrea Ronchini/NurPhoto via Getty Images PROS AND CONS The appeal for Italy is obvious. The Olympics provide “an ideal space for PR,” said analyst Leo Goretti, from the think tank Istituto Affari Internazionali. If the country delivers both organizationally and competitively, “these events can bolster [the] image of political leaders. Unless there is a major accident they inevitably end up providing a positive platform,” he added. The renewed ambition comes on the back of a largely glitch-free Games. Italy finished third behind Norway and the U.S., collecting 30 medals and underscoring a sharp contrast with its traditional sporting standard-bearer — the men’s football team — which has missed two consecutive World Cups and faces the prospect of failing to qualify for a third. For a country that often maligns itself as chaotic and dysfunctional, Milan-Cortina demonstrated that Italy can run complex global events and do so successfully. But the afterglow of hosting an Olympics fades quickly. A bid for 2036 or 2040 would face fierce competition from emerging economies — and, crucially, questions about costs would quickly resurface. The long-term return on infrastructure investment remains uncertain, Goretti said. The Winter Olympics showed that Italy can command the global stage. But whether the confidence boost can translate into another successful bid is a harder test.

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Friedrich Merz reist nach China. Mit einer 30-köpfigen Wirtschaftsdelegation und klaren Worten im Gepäck. Kurz vor dem Abflug hat der Kanzler das Land als globalen Machtfaktor beschrieben, der Abhängigkeiten ausnutzt, Taiwan unter Druck setzt und die internationale Ordnung in seinem Sinne neu deutet. Gordon Repinski analysiert, wie der Kanzler die kritische Perspektive darauf und wirtschaftspolitische Interessen Deutschlands auf seiner Reise in Einklang bringen will. Im 200-Sekunden-Interview spricht BDI-Hauptgeschäftsführerin Tanja Gönner über Wettbewerb mit China, De-Risking, Exportkontrollen bei Seltenen Erden und die Balance zwischen strategischer Eigenständigkeit und wirtschaftlicher Kooperation. Bei den Grünen steht eine weitreichende Parteireform an. Maximilian Stascheit über ein neues Präsidium, Generalsekretär, weniger basisdemokratische Elemente. Die Partei will ihre Strukturen stärker an Union und SPD angleichen. Zwei Jahre POLITICO Deutschland. Beim Jubiläum im Axel-Springer-Hochhaus diskutieren u.a. Julia Klöckner, Karsten Wildberger, Ricarda Lang, Tim Klüssendorf und Florence Gaub über Debattenkultur, Reformfähigkeitg in der Politik. Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. ⁠Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren.⁠ Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon Repinski: Instagram: ⁠@gordon.repinski⁠ | X: ⁠@GordonRepinski⁠. POLITICO Deutschland – ein Angebot der Axel Springer Deutschland GmbH Axel-Springer-Straße 65, 10888 Berlin Tel: +49 (30) 2591 0 ⁠information@axelspringer.de⁠ Sitz: Amtsgericht Berlin-Charlottenburg, HRB 196159 B USt-IdNr: DE 214 852 390 Geschäftsführer: Carolin Hulshoff Pol, Mathias Sanchez Luna **(Anzeige) Eine Nachricht von Roche Deutschland: Deutschlands Zukunft entscheidet sich bei Innovation. Darum investieren wir heute Milliarden in Forschung, Produktion und Wertschöpfung in Deutschland – für Souveränität, Sicherheit und Unabhängigkeit. Denn klar ist: Wo Innovation ausgebremst wird, verliert eine Schlüsselindustrie an Tempo. Und Deutschland an gesunder Zukunft.**

BRUSSELS — The EU’s sports commissioner won’t be going to the opening ceremony of the Paralympics over a decision to allow athletes from Russia and Belarus to fly their national flags. The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has granted places to 10 athletes from the two countries in next month’s Winter Games and they will be “treated like [those from] any other country,” the IPC told the AFP news agency.  Athletes from Russia and Belarus were banned from Paralympic competition after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.  A partial ban — allowing athletes to compete but only as neutrals — was introduced in 2023. Glenn Micallef, the EU’s sports commissioner, described the decision to allow the athletes to fly the Russian and Belarusian flags as “unacceptable.” In a post on X, Micallef said: “While Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine continues, I cannot support the reinstatement of national symbols, flags, anthems and uniforms, that are inseparable from that conflict.” He added that he would not be attending the opening ceremony and encouraged “likeminded counterparts” to do the same. Ukraine’s Sports Minister Matvii Bidnyi said on X that the IPC’s move was “disappointing and outrageous.”

BRUSSELS — One of the most toxic culture wars in the U.K. and U.S. is being brought to Brussels. Rights groups argue that debates about gender issues are being imported from the anglophone world into EU politics, with right-wing groups choosing to stoke arguments about transgender people in hopes of dividing the left. Conservative Christian organizations in the U.S. “saw that there was a fight happening there,” said Neil Datta, executive director and founder of the European Parliamentary Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF). “A fight that could be useful to them.” The EPF has been tracking the rise of what they call the “anti-gender” movement across Europe, and found that hundreds of groups targeting so-called gender ideology — including think tanks, church-run advocacy groups, political parties and media — had raised $1.18 billion between 2019 and 2023, up from $81 million between 2009 and 2018.  The groups cover a range of policies from abortion to sex education, with transgender rights making up a large part of the lobbying. LGBTQ+ groups argue the mainstream politicization of such debates is part of a rolling back of fundamental rights, while gender-critical groups believe that recognizing transgender people’s identities undermines women. In the U.S., the debate is driven mostly by the religious right, said Wendy Via, co-founder of the Global Project. | Lou Lampaert/AFP via Getty Images “It’s one of those subjects that is easy politically to attack because we’re talking about a small community of people that are widely misunderstood,” said Cianán Russell, senior policy officer at ILGA-Europe, the European branch of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association. “It absolutely is our perception that there are more anti-trans actors getting access to spaces in Brussels and that the types of spaces that they are able to access are more institutionalized,” said Russell, adding that at least five events have taken place in the European Parliament in the past year. One of those included the “Seventh Transatlantic Summit,” a two-day event at the Parliament earlier this month that saw speakers “mock transgender people,” according to the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, a U.S.-based NGO. The summit organizers, Political Network for Values, told POLITICO’s EU Influence newsletter that it is “an international network that brings together politicians who share values.” A spokesperson added: “Among those values is respect for the dignity of every human being. We would never intentionally mock a person, regardless of their condition. On the other hand, using objective data from science in relation to the issue of ‘transgenderism’ is in no way mockery.” Speakers included Rodrigo Iván Cortés, founder of Mexico’s National Front for the Family, who has been convicted of gender-based political violence against a transgender U.S. representative. Another was the British Catholic priest Benedict Kiely, who the Global Project said compared transgender identity to people identifying as animals. Kiely declined to comment. Other events at EU institutions include a December visit by Chris Elston, also known as Billboard Chris, an Australian anti-trans influencer, who spoke at the Parliament after being invited by an Alternative for Germany lawmaker, Christine Anderson. MCC Brussels, a prominent think tank linked to the Hungarian government, co-hosted a panel at the end of last year in the Parliament titled “The Trans Ideology Threat,” hosted by Fidesz lawmaker András László, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The MCC event accused the EU of being “addicted to gender ideology,” despite what the organizers describe as an “an enormous backlash” across the EU. “For European elites, trans ideology is a key ‘EU value’ which no one is allowed to question.” MCC spokesperson John O’Brien said: “Far from it being that the right are stomping over trans rights, the truth is that the trans lobby train has been steamrolling over the rights of women and girls for years.” FROM THE US TO EUROPE The EPF’s Datta said the heated debate around trans issues has largely been imported to Brussels. “You find that this contestation takes place in certain ways in certain countries, like in the U.S or the U.K., where it’s become the most toxic. In Belgium, it’s not like that at all.” Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull pushed back on the idea that a backlash against transgender rights is being deliberately pushed by conservative activists who see it as an opportunity to splinter the left. | Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images Transgender peoples’ rights have been in the spotlight in the U.K. in recent months after the country’s Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex — a key argument of the “gender-critical” movement. The ILGA Rainbow Map, which monitors the legal and policy landscape for LGBTQ+ people across Europe, saw the U.K. drop from its highest spot in 2019 to 22 out of 49 countries in 2025.  In the U.S., the debate is driven mostly by the religious right, said Wendy Via, co-founder of the Global Project.  “The American groups behind Project 2025 [a right-wing wishlist for the second Donald Trump term] and their allies are increasingly working with European political figures and think tanks to target and dehumanize the trans community,” she said. “Cruelly stripping human rights protections from trans people is the first phase of their global imperative to erase the LGBTQ+ community entirely and take back the hard-won rights protections from women across the world,” Via said. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, a gender-critical activist who spoke at the Parliament in November as part of MCC’s event, told Influence at the time that transgender rights are “very much not a grassroots movement, but a top-down, well-funded movement.” And she pushed back on the idea that a backlash against transgender rights is being deliberately pushed by conservative activists who see it as an opportunity to splinter the left. “I think it’s the other way around. I think it’s the arrogance of the left and the contempt that the left has for women that has enabled women to leave the left.”