More than 221 million euros ($242 million) in European Union funds have been used to advance a “radical” gender identity agenda, according to a report.
Report author and sociologist Ashley Frawley said the findings show that activists have played a direct role in drafting EU policies.
Frawley said that the policies, originally designed to protect women and girls, have been reshaped to prioritize gender identity.
She added that they have been made without “broader public consultation and with an air of disregard for the principle of subsidiarity and national sovereignty.”
The conservative think tank has been critical of EU policies and has published reports by experts on free speech, digital laws, and net-zero.
Gender ideology is a concept where “gender identity” refers to the belief that a person may have been born in “the wrong body,” as opposed to the view that humans are either male or female and that biological sex is immutable.
However, gender self-identification has been raised by numerous LGBT and women’s groups as encroaching on the privacy and rights of women and same-sex attracted people.
“This shift has been driven not by democratic debate or public demand, but by a powerful network of EU-funded NGOs that have embedded their priorities deep within EU policy making,” the report said of the millions spent on the gender identity agenda.
The data was collected from the Financial Transparency System (FTS) for groups focused on or generally supportive of gender identity that received funding between 2014 and 2023.
The most, 64.95 million euros ($71 million), was allocated solely to ILGA Worldwide, a leading gender identity advocacy group.
Other beneficiaries included ILGA Worldwide’s European arm, ILGA-Europe (16 million euros, or $17.5 million).
Others included the international LGBT organization IGLYO (6 million euros), Transgender Europe (TGEU) (4.6 million euros), the lesbian feminist and intersectional network (6.2 million euros), and Organisation Intersex International Europe (1.2 million euros).
“ILGA and ILGYO are just two examples of LGBT groups that have made transgender ideology central to their remit, but even they engage in important activities that improve the lives of many,” the report said.
“However, while combatting discrimination against minority groups is important, the demands of these groups demonstrate considerable mission creep and encompass an injunction to accept a particular and controversial worldview.”
The report said that 26 million euros ($28 million) more had been spent on activist-driven research promoting gender identity ideology.
Frawley told The Epoch Times that while it looks like the money is going to a huge range of causes, what these organizations are doing is “radically” redefining gender.
Self-ID at Any Age
The report said that the EU’s LGBT Equality strategy 2020–2025, while not legally binding, “enshrines one of the most radical demands of transgender activists”: the principle of self-ID at any age.“A lot of these policies are essentially verbatim the desires of NGOs,” Frawley said.
“I don’t think we should necessarily blame the NGOs,” she said, noting that this is the nature of such organizations.
However, she accused the EU of “soft governing” as they’re “paying these groups to lobby themselves, to target countries whose values they don’t like.”
She said that activists have mainstreamed for example same-sex attraction to be “same-gender attraction.”
None of the organizations mentioned in the report responded to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
An EU spokeswoman told The Epoch Times by email that it was still drafting a response.
