In almost every election in Europe in recent years, a discreet but increasingly powerful force has been at play to help bolster the far right. Much like the architects behind “Project 2025”, a set of ultra-conservative networks are waging a campaign to dismantle progressive European policies and replace them with traditionalist Christian values – leaving little room for feminists, LGBTQ+ activists and other marginalised groups.
Issued on: 21/03/2025 -
FRANCE24
By: Louise NORDSTROM
Surge in attacks against LGBTQ+ community
Minority groups are indeed already very much being targeted.
In mid-February, ILGA-Europe, the European chapter of the LGBT+ rights group, sounded the alarm by issuing a report warning that the LGBTQ+ community was being “weaponised to erode the foundations of freedom and democracy across Europe”.
In its 162-page annual review, ILGA-Europe warned of a new era where a growing number of European governments were fuelling anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment “to push laws that restrict freedom of expression, association, and fair elections”.
Chaber, ILGA-Europe’s executive director, who only goes by their surname, said that even more frighteningly, the group had seen – only in the past four to six weeks – “very similar proposals being raised by politicians in Albania, Slovakia, Latvia, Hungary. And they are around anti-trans, anti-propaganda and foreign agents laws”.
“They are all popping up essentially in the same language, with the same argumentation, obviously in different languages, but the same nomenclature, in different parts of the region where there is a strengthened far right presence.”
The direct consequence of this, they said, is a surge in anti-LGBTQ+ violence – “there has been a significant increase over the past year”, with as many as 17 attacks on Pride parades, including in Germany and France – but in the longer term, a severe weakening of democracy, as seen in Georgia recently.
Project 2025 a blueprint for Europe
Korolczuk is not surprised. “They [the ultraconservatives] are also producing knowledge. They publish papers, they publish amicus briefs for court proceedings and so on. And they share those,” she said.
The reason the LGBTQ+ is being targeted is no coincidence, she said. “Because they are a minority. They are going after the weakest. That's very clear.”
Korolczuk said she had no doubt that many European ultraconservative groups are also cooperating with like-minded peers in the US, like the Heritage foundation that authored “Project 2025”, the conservative governance plan that President Donald Trump appears to base at least some of his decisions on.
And, she said, “I think Project 2025 will be used as a blueprint in some European elections as well”.
She could be right. On March 11, the Heritage Foundation convened a “closed-door workshop” for hardline conservative groups, including Ordo Iuris and the Mathias Corvinus Collegium – the Hungarian conservative university that has received generous funding by Viktor Orban’s right-wing government – in Washington DC to discuss how they could dismantle the European Union.
Kenneth Haar, a researcher and campaigner at the transparency watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory, told DeSmog, an international journalism organisation that focuses on climate change, that it was “quite simply terrifying” to see the Heritage Foundation "moving its attention to Europe”.
“Most of the attacks made by the Trump presidency in recent weeks on civil rights, on migrants, on LGBTQ+ rights and more, can be traced back to Project 2025,” he said. “We should be worried about them building up ambitions and strength in Europe.”
By: Louise NORDSTROM
IWD PROTEST BY FASCISTS IN POLAND
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\A bucket with a doll representing a newborn baby covered in red paint is displayed as pro-life activists protest in front of Poland's first activist-run abortion consultation point, on March 8, 2025. © Wojtek Radwanski, AFP
In the summer of 2017, a peculiar document was leaked and published on the whistle-blowing platform WikiLeaks. The secret document, labelled “Restoring the Natural Order: an Agenda for Europe”, outlined a detailed strategy on how to roll back progressive legislation including the right to divorce, women’s access to contraception and abortion, and equal rights for members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Behind the manifesto was a vast transatlantic network of more than 100 hard-line Catholic groups in 30 countries from all over the world called “Agenda Europe”.
Although the network was largely dispersed after a 2018 expose by Franco-German broadcaster Arte, the ideologies and ambitions that had brought them together in such an organised manner have not.
“Agenda Europe was just one of the many platforms on which they cooperate,” said Elzbieta Korolczuk, a Polish sociologist and associated professor at Sodertorn University in Sweden whose research interests involve gender, social movements and civil society and are funded by the European Commission.
Although some of the organisations, like the Brazil-based but European franchised Tradition, Family, Property (TFP), have been around for decades, others, like Ordo Iuris in Poland – which in large part engineered the country’s strict 2021 ban on abortion – have popped up in the last 10 years or so in the form of NGOs, think tanks and lobby groups.
And they are getting increasingly organised, convening conferences and meetings, and in some cases, even setting up universities to train a future ultraconservative elite of lawyers, journalists, teachers, and business- and political leaders.
Many of the groups, like European Dignity Watch (EDW), One of Us, and the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECIJ), are Brussels- or Strasbourg-based, with access to – and thereby the power to influence – the European Parliament.
Hooking up with the far right
One of the keys to their increased exposure to power, Korolczuk explained, is that these groups are increasingly cooperating with far-right political parties, riding on the wave of populism over issues, for example, like migration and economic hardship.
“It’s sort of an opportunistic synergy,” she said, noting that while far-right parties may be able to reach the upper echelons of power through their often vague ideological projects that are mainly aimed at “bringing down the elite”, the ultraconservatives can help them stay there, by lending them their rhetoric of protecting traditional family values.
“By adopting this ultra-conservative language they [the far right] can position themselves as protectors of the family and protectors of children, creating moral panics around issues such as transgender rights which people might not know much about and can be made to worry about,” she said. “Because who doesn’t want to protect children?”
In the meantime, the ultraconservatives are handed key positions in, for example, the government or the judiciary where they can enforce their traditionalist agenda. Like in Poland, where Przemyslaw Czarnek, an Ordo Iuris supporter, acted as the education minister while the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party was still at the helm.
“They are very clear about what they want: They want to promote so-called family values, meaning that they want to reverse progressive, tendencies concerning LGBTQ+ rights, sexual and reproductive rights and minority rights,” Korolczuk said.
In the summer of 2017, a peculiar document was leaked and published on the whistle-blowing platform WikiLeaks. The secret document, labelled “Restoring the Natural Order: an Agenda for Europe”, outlined a detailed strategy on how to roll back progressive legislation including the right to divorce, women’s access to contraception and abortion, and equal rights for members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Behind the manifesto was a vast transatlantic network of more than 100 hard-line Catholic groups in 30 countries from all over the world called “Agenda Europe”.
Although the network was largely dispersed after a 2018 expose by Franco-German broadcaster Arte, the ideologies and ambitions that had brought them together in such an organised manner have not.
“Agenda Europe was just one of the many platforms on which they cooperate,” said Elzbieta Korolczuk, a Polish sociologist and associated professor at Sodertorn University in Sweden whose research interests involve gender, social movements and civil society and are funded by the European Commission.
Although some of the organisations, like the Brazil-based but European franchised Tradition, Family, Property (TFP), have been around for decades, others, like Ordo Iuris in Poland – which in large part engineered the country’s strict 2021 ban on abortion – have popped up in the last 10 years or so in the form of NGOs, think tanks and lobby groups.
And they are getting increasingly organised, convening conferences and meetings, and in some cases, even setting up universities to train a future ultraconservative elite of lawyers, journalists, teachers, and business- and political leaders.
Many of the groups, like European Dignity Watch (EDW), One of Us, and the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECIJ), are Brussels- or Strasbourg-based, with access to – and thereby the power to influence – the European Parliament.
Hooking up with the far right
One of the keys to their increased exposure to power, Korolczuk explained, is that these groups are increasingly cooperating with far-right political parties, riding on the wave of populism over issues, for example, like migration and economic hardship.
“It’s sort of an opportunistic synergy,” she said, noting that while far-right parties may be able to reach the upper echelons of power through their often vague ideological projects that are mainly aimed at “bringing down the elite”, the ultraconservatives can help them stay there, by lending them their rhetoric of protecting traditional family values.
“By adopting this ultra-conservative language they [the far right] can position themselves as protectors of the family and protectors of children, creating moral panics around issues such as transgender rights which people might not know much about and can be made to worry about,” she said. “Because who doesn’t want to protect children?”
In the meantime, the ultraconservatives are handed key positions in, for example, the government or the judiciary where they can enforce their traditionalist agenda. Like in Poland, where Przemyslaw Czarnek, an Ordo Iuris supporter, acted as the education minister while the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party was still at the helm.
“They are very clear about what they want: They want to promote so-called family values, meaning that they want to reverse progressive, tendencies concerning LGBTQ+ rights, sexual and reproductive rights and minority rights,” Korolczuk said.
Surge in attacks against LGBTQ+ community
Minority groups are indeed already very much being targeted.
In mid-February, ILGA-Europe, the European chapter of the LGBT+ rights group, sounded the alarm by issuing a report warning that the LGBTQ+ community was being “weaponised to erode the foundations of freedom and democracy across Europe”.
In its 162-page annual review, ILGA-Europe warned of a new era where a growing number of European governments were fuelling anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment “to push laws that restrict freedom of expression, association, and fair elections”.
Chaber, ILGA-Europe’s executive director, who only goes by their surname, said that even more frighteningly, the group had seen – only in the past four to six weeks – “very similar proposals being raised by politicians in Albania, Slovakia, Latvia, Hungary. And they are around anti-trans, anti-propaganda and foreign agents laws”.
“They are all popping up essentially in the same language, with the same argumentation, obviously in different languages, but the same nomenclature, in different parts of the region where there is a strengthened far right presence.”
The direct consequence of this, they said, is a surge in anti-LGBTQ+ violence – “there has been a significant increase over the past year”, with as many as 17 attacks on Pride parades, including in Germany and France – but in the longer term, a severe weakening of democracy, as seen in Georgia recently.
Project 2025 a blueprint for Europe
Korolczuk is not surprised. “They [the ultraconservatives] are also producing knowledge. They publish papers, they publish amicus briefs for court proceedings and so on. And they share those,” she said.
The reason the LGBTQ+ is being targeted is no coincidence, she said. “Because they are a minority. They are going after the weakest. That's very clear.”
Korolczuk said she had no doubt that many European ultraconservative groups are also cooperating with like-minded peers in the US, like the Heritage foundation that authored “Project 2025”, the conservative governance plan that President Donald Trump appears to base at least some of his decisions on.
And, she said, “I think Project 2025 will be used as a blueprint in some European elections as well”.
She could be right. On March 11, the Heritage Foundation convened a “closed-door workshop” for hardline conservative groups, including Ordo Iuris and the Mathias Corvinus Collegium – the Hungarian conservative university that has received generous funding by Viktor Orban’s right-wing government – in Washington DC to discuss how they could dismantle the European Union.
Kenneth Haar, a researcher and campaigner at the transparency watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory, told DeSmog, an international journalism organisation that focuses on climate change, that it was “quite simply terrifying” to see the Heritage Foundation "moving its attention to Europe”.
“Most of the attacks made by the Trump presidency in recent weeks on civil rights, on migrants, on LGBTQ+ rights and more, can be traced back to Project 2025,” he said. “We should be worried about them building up ambitions and strength in Europe.”
