By Tamás Orbán , European Conservative.
A European Parliament-linked group warns of a ‘radical threat’ from religious conservatives—meaning anyone who defends life, family, or faith.
Last week, on June 26th, the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF) launched The Next Wave, a “report” that purports to expose the rise of so-called “anti-gender” and “anti-feminist” religious actors in Europe, whose goal is to “dismantle decades of hard-won sexual and reproductive rights across Europe.”
Cloaked in the language of human rights, the document is, in truth, a politically charged dossier; reading more like a counter-terrorist threat assessment, and explicitly paints religious advocacy groups as part of an organized extremist threat that needs to be stopped at all costs.
“A new alliance of religious extremists, far-right populists, and oligarchic funders” is trying to “launder religious extremism into mainstream governance through media, NGOs, political parties, and public institutions,” the authors claim, blind to the irony that EPF itself is bankrolled by powerful lobby groups and is embedded in EU institutions that turn its activism into legislation.
Despite presenting itself as a neutral parliamentary forum, the EPF is a well-funded advocacy network closely aligned with the European Commission, receiving just under €3 million in public funding annually, ironically from sources outside the Continent.
Its financial backing includes powerful donors like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Open Society Foundations, IPPF, organizations which, in many instances, are non-European and have vested interests in shaping social policy across Europe.
The EPF operates using soft power to access the EU Parliament and exert influence over major EU funding instruments such as the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and the infamous censorship tool, the Digital Services Act (DSA).
Contrary to the pretenses of its authors, this is not research; it is an ideological campaign aimed at delegitimizing dissent and laying the groundwork for EU-sanctioned censorship to crush political dissent.
The fact that the report was championed at its EU Parliament launch by German and Polish MEPs at the same time the rule of law and democratic norms are trampled upon in their own countries is a clear sign of the endemic hypocrisy that its authors willfully ignore.