The European Parliament has excluded a pan-Muslim youth organization from its activities after 33 parliamentarians demanded its removal, citing documentation that links the network to radical Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Marion Maréchal, founder-president of the Identity–Freedoms (IDL) political party, hailed the expulsion of the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organizations (FEMYSO) as a “new victory against the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood,” revealing that the European Parliament Bureau, the parliament’s rule-making body, decided to bar the network during its meeting on July 7. FEMYSO has long been regarded as an Islamist front organization established by its founders to advance the cause of religious separatism in Europe.
“We were on all fronts to obtain this decision,” which “I initiated and which was signed by 30 MEPs from all right-wing groups,” Maréchal tweeted. “This new victory strengthens my determination to root out Islamist networks, the Muslim Brotherhood and their relays, wherever they seek to infiltrate.”
Lawmakers Warn European Parliament of Youth Jihadi Threat
The European Centre for Research and Information on the Muslim Brotherhood (CERIF) obtained a copy of the MEPs’ letter to European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, dated May 27, 2025, which asks Metsola to bar FEMYSO from the next European Youth Event (EYE).
“It is unacceptable to expose thousands of young people taking part in the EYE to the influence of radical Islam, which is opposed to all European values, especially in Strasbourg, a martyr city of Islamic terrorism,” the parliamentarians, who belong to the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) in the European Parliament, emphasized.
The letter cited a report published by the French government in 2025, The Muslim Brotherhood and Political Islamism in France. The report, the MEPs observed, “presents FEMYSO as the youth branch of the Council of European Muslims, the keystone of [the] Muslim Brotherhood in Europe.”
“European institutions must realise how naïve they have been with the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategy of infiltration and influence in Brussels,” the letter noted, insisting that the Parliament has “no excuse for ignoring the real nature of the FEMYSO,” after the report’s publication.
The parliamentarians explained that FEMYSO serves as an umbrella for 32 Muslim organisations, including the Islamic Community Millî Görüş—Youth and Students, which German intelligence considers an antisemitic movement whose objectives are not compatible with democracy.
The MEPs warned that endorsing bodies linked to the Muslim Brotherhood in the context of increasing jihadist recruitment among youth and growing support for radical Islamic law is irresponsible and a “significant threat to the core values that underpin European civilization.”
“During the last term, when we denounced the Muslim Brotherhood organization FEMYSO, we were labeled racists and Islamophobes. That’s their strategy: demonize to infiltrate more effectively. Today, Parliament excludes it. We’ve come a long way. What a victory!” French MEP Catherine Griset wrote on X.
Youth Network Denies Expulsion
FEMYSO hit back in a July 8 press release, accusing Maréchal of “recycling allegations and narratives that have been repeatedly debunked” and demanding an “urgent clarification” from the European Parliament “regarding the accuracy of these public claims.”
“We trust our institutions to not be drawn into this disinformation,” the statement noted, explaining that FEMYSO had not been informed of its expulsion nor had it been invited to participate in any process relating to such a decision. The network inserted a link to a 2019 FEMYSO statement categorically denying any association with the Brotherhood.
Its strength lies in victimhood reversal: every attack feeds it.
Speaking to Focus on Western Islamism (FWI), eminent scholar and expert on the Muslim Brotherhood, Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, noted that “the ‘victory’ claimed by Marion Maréchal against FEMYSO is merely one episode in a longer story: that of a federation born in 1996 within the orbit of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE) and the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Bergeaud-Blackler, who is the president of CERIF, warned that the Brotherhood “has managed to present itself as an anti-racist, anti-discrimination voice to carry religious demands, under secular vocabulary, into the very heart of the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of Europe.”
“Its strength lies in victimhood reversal: every attack feeds it,” the author of The Muslim Brotherhood and its Networks: The Investigation told FWI. “And a right-wing opposition not always scrupulous in its methods supplies it with precisely the aggressor this mechanism needs to reframe any criticism as proof of so-called ‘Islamophobia,’” she added.
Independent Reports Raise Concerns Over FEMYSO’s Brotherhood Links
A report titled Network of Networks: The Muslim Brotherhood in Europe, published in 2021 by the ECR Group, notes that “a characteristic of FEMYSO has been the high number of young Muslims from across the continent taking senior positions within the organization, who are from prominent Muslim Brotherhood families.”
Authored by Paul Stott and Tommaso Virgili, the 39-page dossier explores FEMYSO’s influence as a holder of participatory status with the Council of Europe and a member of its Advisory Council on Youth.
The report revealed that FEMYSO had received €288,856.50 from European Commission coffers as of 2019. “While not denying FEMYSO’s links to the Muslim Brotherhood, the European Commission also sought to head off criticism about those it is willing to both work with and fund,” Stott and Virgili wrote.
British lawmakers have also attempted to block FEMYSO’s operations. In September 2025, Nick Timothy, MP, warned the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, that FEMYSO, which recently opened a U.K. office, had been identified by France as a “key player” in the Muslim Brotherhood.
“While presenting itself as an advocacy group for Muslim youth, the backgrounds of several FEMYSO figures are deeply concerning,” Timothy wrote, cautioning that the organization’s presence in Britain “raises legitimate questions about potential risks to our national security and social cohesion,” FWI reported.
