A new report has revealed that over €220 million in EU funds have been used to advance “a radical gender identity agenda” over the last decade, including support in the EU for adopting a strategy calling for gender self-ID for children.
The investigation by MCC Brussels, a Hungarian backed think tank, says that research funding is being ‘weaponised’, and that EU-funded research “is being used as an advocacy tool to justify policy changes rather than for neutral academic inquiry” – pointing to €2.4 million in funding for research “Challenging the gender binary”, and a €3 million “MEN4DEM” study which critics say “treats traditional masculinity as a threat to democracy”.
The report, “Mission Creeps: How EU Funding and Activist NGOs Captured the Gender Agenda,” was authored by sociologist Ashley Frawley, and MCC Brussels say it is the first comprehensive investigation into how a small but powerful network of NGOs has shaped EU gender policy under the radar of public scrutiny – and that the funding has been used to promote “controversial policies” that “undermine women’s rights, child safeguarding, and national sovereignty – all without meaningful democratic debate”.
The analysis found that at least €40 million had gone to projects involving the “most radical” transgender advocacy groups – categorised as meeting one or more of the following characteristics: “take for granted and/or promote notions of gender radically divorced from sex, endorse concepts like non-binary gender identity, support the demotion of the significance of sex in national accounting and statistics.”
Spokeswoman for the Irish campaign group, The Countess, Laoise De Brún, said “all roads lead back to Europe when it comes to the capture of our institutions and government departments.”
“Gender Self-ID and Hate Speech laws, anti-Conversion Therapy are all manufactured not to solve actual societal problems but to force our society in a certain direction. They do not do what they say on the tin,” she said.
“For two long, our craven politicians have behaved like foie gras geese, feet nailed to the floor ingesting an endless diet of increasingly unhinged EU legislation that bears no connection to what the people of Ireland need or want.”
“NGOs have the same stranglehold of Ministers in Ireland as they do at a European level and they are all pushing the same drug. A heady new facet of human rights or a new frontier of progressivism which politician drink up eager to burnish their credentials and march in step with the liberal ruling elite. In reality all of these laws are an attack on the family, on childhood, on women’s rights, on free speech and on state sovereignty. We need a DOGE of these NGOs and how they operate in the EU and at home. Before it’s too late.”
Frank Furedi, Executive Director of MCC Brussels, commenting on the new report, said, “What we’re seeing from our research is the corruption of political processes. There’s a two-way-process where civil society is systematically bought off to provide the EU with legitimacy, whilst the EU becomes increasingly radicalised by ideologues claiming to represent civil society. This is an increasingly secretive political process where power is rendered invisible to ordinary people.”
The report listed the major beneficiaries of EU funding as being:
– ILGA-Europe (involved in projects of €16 million, and directly receiving €12.2 million)
– ILGA-Worldwide (involved in projects of €64.95 million)
– IGLYO (involved in projects of €6 million, and directly receiving €4.5 million)
– Transgender Europe (TGEU) (involved in projects of €4.6 million, and directly receiving €4 million)
– EuroCentralAsianLesbian*Community (directly receiving €6.2 million)
– Organisation Intersex International Europe (involved in projects of €1.2 million, and directly receiving €1 million)
The ILGA is the European arm of an organisation which previously lost consultative status with a UN body in 1994 after it became known that it counted paedophile groups, including NAMBLA, amongst its members. The ILGA is a worldwide federation of nearly 2,000 LGBT advocacy groups. The group was founded in 1978 in Coventry, England. One of the groups founders was Ian Dunn, a gay rights activist who had helped found the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) in 1974.
The think tank said that at least €26 million has been used to fund activist-driven research promoting gender identity ideology -and that “covert NGO Influence on EU Policy” meant that activists were shaping EU laws.
“NGOs have played a direct role in drafting EU gender policies, frequently operating without public transparency,” the report claimed, saying that “secretive lobbying tactics” were being used, and pointing to where the ILGA had urged politicians to keep their activities “out of the public eye whenever necessary,” with over 1,000 candidates signing a 2024 European Election pledge to support this strategy.
EU records showed that gender ideology activists had “extensive EU institutional access” the report said.
ILGA-Europe had 42 meetings with Commissioners, 14 public consultations, 16 roadmap contributions, and 10 European Parliament meetings, and met with 3 expert groups, it revealed – while Transgender Europe had 7 Commissioner meetings, and 8 public consultations.
“The influence of these organisations raises concerns about democratic accountability, as policies are increasingly dictated by unelected activists rather than open national debates,” MCC Brussels said.
They also said that there were concerns regarding national competencies, with NGOs using “EU funding to pressure national governments into adopting gender identity laws, bypassing national sovereignty.”
“The proposed EU Certificate of Parenthood could override national definitions of family law, forcing member states to recognise legal parenthood definitions imposed by Brussels,” they said, adding that education policies were being “influenced without and often explicitly against parental consent”.
“NGO campaigners push for gender transitions in children to be hidden from parents, and for parents to be forced into compliance through the courts if necessary,” they said, with LGBTQI-inclusive curricula “being implemented despite parental concerns”.
Reports indicate that in Portugal, schools can facilitate child social transitioning without parental knowledge, and parental opposition may lead to state intervention.
As a consequence, women’s rights were being eroded the report claims, saying that “policies originally designed to protect women and girls have been reshaped to prioritise gender identity”. It said that the redefinition of legal terms was a concern – “the shift from “violence against women” to “gender-based violence” dilutes protections specifically for biological females.”
The report said that “single-sex spaces at risk: The push for gender self-identification raises concerns over privacy, safety, and the integrity of women’s rights.”
It called for “democratic accountability” and urged “the EU to ensure policy decisions are subject to public debate rather than activist lobbying”.
Greater scrutiny of EU funding allocation is needed to prevent ideological capture – and safeguards must be implemented to respect national sovereignty, parental rights, and the safety of women and children, “MCC Brussels said.
Laoise de Brún said that while Irish groups were in the public eye in regard to gender ideology, the “real power brokers” were the European groups “who work behind the scenes quietly”.
“Even though TENI is the face of trans ideology in Ireland and have been effective in lobbying for gender Self-ID, certain of their leadership have been centred by the media and the national women’s council etc, in reality, the colourful characters of the board of TENI are just a distraction. In many ways they work best to that end if not taken seriously or if they are simply there to garner sympathy. The real power brokers are the suits of ILGA and ILGYO who work behind the scenes quietly, dismantling the fabric of our society pillar by pillar, brick by brick,” she said.
“The leaked Denton’s document was a manual on how to do this advocacy and how to keep this advocacy secret. All the more effective that way. They knew from the start that the people would not like it and would push back hard. The bureaucrats and technocrats of the EU machine are quite happy to work like this; it’s in their DNA. The Politburo knows better than the ordinary man or woman what is best for their families, for their children and for their country.”
She said that Gender Self-ID “does not help a tiny handful of distressed individuals live their lives” but was “an access-all area pass for predators, transgressors, chancers and cheats. It forces women to partake in men’s sexual fetish and if they complain they are guilty of a hate crime. Anti-conversion therapy bill forces clinicians to affirm anyone presenting with gender confusion as trans. These are mostly young women: distressed, Autistic, traumatised. Clinicians must ignore all their issues and simply affirm or face professional sanction. This is the State elbowing into the space of private, therapeutic clinical relationships.”
The Hungarian-funded think tank is an arm of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), a Budapest-based college that is funded by Viktor Orbán’s government and plans to “provide an alternative” for Europe’s “polarized cultural landscape”. Critics say it aims to “create an anti-EU, far-right political powerhouse in Brussels”.