One Strategy to Rule Them All: The EU’s Descent into Queer Activism
What to expect from the European Union in 2025, by Faika El-Nagashi, Anna Zobnina and Róisín Michaux
While commentators in the UK and US celebrate what they see as a turning tide against gender identity ideology, the European Union appears to be swimming doggedly in the opposite direction. Across much of Europe, the agenda isn’t stalling; it’s gathering steam.
In November 2020, the EU unveiled its first LGBTIQ Equality Strategy (2020-2025)—a grandiose political manifesto designed to weave LGBTIQ issues into the fabric of EU policies, legislation, funding programmes, and even its external relations.1 Though the strategy carries no legal force, its influence is undeniable. Civil society organisations and activists on the ground wield anything bearing the EU stamp like a blunt instrument, treating it as irrefutable proof of progressive consensus. That strategy is then recycled and repurposed in national debates, magnifying its effect far beyond its official remit.
Funding streams such as CERV, Erasmus+, and ESF+ dutifully flow toward LGBTIQ initiatives, supporting projects that align with the EU’s broader vision of progress—which increasingly resembles a Netflix series written by an algorithm trained on Tumblr blogs. These programmes not only nudge member states and candidate countries toward compliance but also export the agenda beyond European borders, positioning the EU as a global standard-bearer of identity politics.
The strategy was drafted under the leadership of then-Commissioner for Equality Helena Dalli, shaped in collaboration with institutional partners like the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) and civil society organisations. Chief among these is ILGA-Europe, comparable to the UK’s notorious queer advocacy group Stonewall—but on steroids. With deeper pockets, more expansive access to European institutions, and an outsized influence over policymaking, ILGA-Europe has been instrumental in defining the scope and priorities of the strategy, ensuring its agenda aligns neatly with the broader goals of radical queer activism.2
Rewriting Society Through Identity Politics
At its core, the EU’s LGBTIQ Equality Strategy outlines an agenda to reshape societal norms by embedding new definitions and priorities into the legal and cultural frameworks of its member states. With objectives such as implementing self-identification (self-ID) for legal gender recognition, banning conversion therapy, eliminating hate speech without defining what “hate” actually entails, and funding expansive LGBTIQ initiatives, the strategy pushes for a reality that conforms to activist demands, which seem to evolve with bewildering frequency as new terminologies and priorities emerge.3
The proposed bans on conversion therapy have, over recent years, expanded beyond sexual orientation to include gender identity and gender expression—concepts that defy concrete definition and instead entrench activist-driven notions of “non-binary” and “queer” identities. This broadening of scope, coupled with the strategy’s redefinition of sexual orientation to focus on “gender” rather than biological sex, renders the core understanding of lesbians and gays as same-sex attracted increasingly meaningless. A world where words mean everything and nothing is, apparently, a world of progress.
Similarly, self-ID policies dismantle traditional sex-based distinctions by replacing biological reality with subjective gender declarations. These policies not only create significant legal inconsistencies and tangible disadvantages, particularly when it comes to safeguarding women’s rights to single-sex spaces and services. They also render women’s quotas and other targeted measures to promote women obsolete. No longer is a woman a woman; now, she is what anyone who declares themselves a woman says she is—a Schrödinger’s identity, both fixed and fluid.
Hate speech laws, which often lack clear boundaries, risk being weaponised against those raising legitimate concerns about the erosion of sex-based rights and the material reality of biological sex. Discussions about the impact of gender identity policies on children and young people, on women, lesbians and gays, and society at large, are routinely framed as harassment or violence. Such laws not only threaten free speech but also transform age-old philosophical debates about truth into legal minefields.
This agenda is not static—it actively rewrites social norms and legal frameworks in ways that are not always transparent or democratically debated. Activists have mastered the art of redefining language and leveraging institutions like the EU to enforce these redefinitions, creating a landscape where meanings and categories shift alongside activist priorities. The result is a reality increasingly shaped by ideological imperatives rather than material facts or long-standing human rights principles.
Eroding the Framework: From Violence Against Women to Gender-Based Violence
At the same time, the EU’s broader work on combating violence against women (VAW) has taken on new contours. In 2023, the EU became a party to the Istanbul Convention,4 and in 2024, it adopted its own Directive on violence against women.5 The EU also plans to designate VAW as a crime under the Euro-crimes category in Article 83 of the TFEU (Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union).6 However, these developments are not as straightforward as they seem. The Istanbul Convention defines gender-based violence against women as “violence that is directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately.” Despite this clear framing, the convention’s explanatory report extends coverage to groups such as cross-dressers and transvestites.7 When the definition stretches this far, does it still have meaning, or has it snapped?
The 2024 EU-wide Survey on VAW, conducted by Eurostat, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency and EIGE, reflects this shift in framing. Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office, is supposed to provide reliable statistical information to support decision-making within the EU. EIGE, the European Institute for Gender Equality, was originally tasked with promoting equality between women and men but has since decided that “sex is too narrowly framed.”8 These institutions increasingly prioritise gender identity over sex-based categories. The European Parliament’s 2021 resolution calling for the inclusion of GBV in the Euro-crimes list makes this trajectory explicit by insisting that GBV must include “gender identity, gender expression, or sex characteristics.”9 This aligns with the EU’s Gender Equality Strategy (2020-2025), which embeds these evolving definitions into its policy foundations.10
The redefinition of VAW as a subset of GBV reflects a deeper ideological shift within EU institutions. By framing violence as symmetrical across “all genders,” the EU risks eroding the specific protections historically afforded to women. This trend mirrors broader efforts within the EU to prioritise gender-neutral frameworks at the expense of recognising material differences rooted in biological sex.
The Wider Cost of Ideological Overreach
The EU’s LGBTIQ Equality Strategy is more than a policy document. It is a masterclass in overreach, prioritising virtue-signaling over meaningful rights protections. Children, young people, women, lesbians and gays are not so much protected as conscripted into a grand ideological project, where human rights are reinterpreted to fit a vision that few outside activist circles ever consented to. Under the guise of equality, the strategy imposes a framework designed to reshape reality itself.
The EU’s ambition to tackle inequality is admirable—essential, even. But overreaching on issues like gender identity undermines this effort. When credibility rests on the ability to navigate complex societal debates with nuance and respect for material realities, ideological fervor is a liability. Gender identity might be a fashionable cause in some quarters, but fashion rarely makes good policy.
The EU’s challenge is not to abandon its role in shaping social policies, but to approach them with clarity and restraint. Policies must be grounded in biological reality, attentive to the rights of all, and open to scrutiny—not built on shifting sands of activist demands. Without this recalibration, the EU risks becoming the very thing it claims to oppose: a force that marginalises dissent and flattens differences in the name of conformity.
Faika El-Nagashi is a former Member of Parliament (MP) with Austria’s Green Party, a political scientist, and a longstanding advocate for human rights.
Anna Zobnina is a feminist advocate specializing in the rights and protection of migrant and refugee women.
Róisín Michaux is a Brussels-based journalist.
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Euro-crimes: Serious crimes listed in Article 83(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), such as terrorism or trafficking, that require EU-level action.
We must keep being vigilent .