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Shouting about “trans rights” isn’t just a pastime for students and fading celebs; it’s a booming, taxpayer-funded industry. A new report reveals that over €221 million in EU funds have been quietly funnelled into gender identity activism over the past decade, keeping a group of NGOs and policy wonks comfortably in business. The report, by sociologist Ashley Frawley, lays out how a handful of well-placed activist groups have embedded their agenda into EU policy.

People across the world have been left reeling by the speed at which single-sex spaces have vanished and institutions and governments have embraced gender self-identification.

The details highlighted by Frawley are eye-opening. In Switzerland, parents whose daughter began identifying as trans at 13 but who refused to support medical transition were separated from her and ordered to hand over her identity documents to state officials. Meanwhile, in Portuguese public schools, children are allowed to “socially transition” without requiring parental consent. The report notes these policies were introduced under the previous government led by António Costa, who now serves as President of the European Council.

According to the report, the EU has sidelined governments, instead relying on NGOs to shape its gender agenda. “The result is a policy framework that prioritises the demands of activists over the needs and values of ordinary citizens,” it says. “It is a deliberate attempt to weaponise civil society to punish member states who do not follow suit by funnelling millions into NGO budgets that align with its ideological priorities. These groups then lobby the EU for the need for their own continued existence in a never-ending self-referential feedback loop.”

It’s no surprise that citizens across Europe have been blind-sided by rapid changes within public institutions. ILGA-Europe (International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association), one of the EU’s favourite lobby groups, has explicitly urged politicians to keep their activities “out of the public eye whenever necessary”. Conveniently, the group received €16 million in EU funding, while its international arm raked in a staggering €65 million.

Yet despite this hefty financial backing, EU-funded gender identity lobbyists have spent years portraying themselves as plucky underdogs fighting a sinister, well-funded opposition. The European Parliamentary Forum, a group of MEPs, has repeatedly pushed the idea that “anti-gender” movements are financed by shadowy networks of religious extremists from Russia and the US. A 2021 report by the group breathlessly warned that “private individuals linked to far-right and libertarian causes in the US” were seeking to “actively influence European institutions.”

This paranoid narrative was enthusiastically parroted by the likes of EU Human Rights Commissioner Dunja Mijatović, who bitterly complained that “ultra-conservative” forces were threatening women’s rights. Ironically, this was the same time her colleagues were busy passing laws that forced women to accept men who identify as trans in their spaces in line with the demands of lobbyists like ILGA.

None of this was happening organically. The same groups lobbying for these changes were the ones pocketing millions in EU funding and enjoying cosy meetings with politicians in Brussels. And this is to say nothing of the now axed USAID arrangements. The report concludes that there is now a growing public backlash against the EU’s gender policies, reflecting a “broader crisis of legitimacy”. “By allowing a small group of well-funded NGOs to shape its agenda,” Frawley writes, “the EU has alienated large sections of its population and fuelled a growing sense of resentment and distrust.”

Having left the EU, the UK now has more freedom to resist the demands of gender identity lobbyists. But these groups are well aware that media scrutiny is a threat to their ambitions for mainland Europe. A 2019 lobbying document from IGLYO (International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Youth & Student Organisation) and supportive law firms admitted that the limitation of press coverage and exposure had been “used to great effect” in other countries to push gender self-ID policies. But in the UK, an uncooperative press has been a major obstacle to their plans.

Even so, the fight isn’t easy. The real grassroots movement — the one not bankrolled by the EU — is made up of ordinary people refusing to let gender ideology be imposed from above. Parents battling school policies, veteran gay rights activists returning to fight for the movement they once built, women refusing to surrender their spaces: this is what bottom-up activism looks like. The difference? They don’t have €221 million in taxpayer cash behind them.