The European Union is providing logistical and financial assistance for a large-scale anti-Islamophobia event hosted by a pan-European youth movement linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, despite having reportedly excluded the organization from its initiatives a few weeks ago.
If the EU once again funds this event in full knowledge of the facts, then it could be regarded as complicity.
The Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organizations (FEMYSO) announced on Instagram that it will host the European Action Day Against Islamophobia on September 21, 2026. The event to counter “Islamophobia” will be supported by the European Union.
The announcement sparked outrage on French social media after Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, chief executive of the Transatlantic Institute for the Study of Contemporary Ideologies and a leading authority on the Muslim Brotherhood, tweeted FEMYSO’s post on September 1.
“The European Action Day Against Islamophobia was secured through the lobbying of FEMYSO, the historic youth branch of the European organization created by the Muslim Brotherhood,” Bergeaud-Blackler Focus on Western Islamism (FWI).
“FEMYSO’s conferences have been held on several occasions on the premises of the European Parliament, in the presence of parliamentarians and commissioners. The organization itself is boasting on its own channels that it is being co-funded by the EU,” she noted.
“By co-funding and by hosting, the EU gives it legitimacy, and that is precisely what the FEMYSO is seeking: to enter existing institutions to capture their resources and their authority. If the EU once again funds this event in full knowledge of the facts, then it could be regarded as complicity,” Bergeaud-Blackler warned.
In the same post, FEMYSO also published a summary of its “Unite & Act” meeting, a three-day seminar that brought together 36 young Muslims from 15 organizations for training and the sharing of best practices as an event “co-funded by the European Union.”
“The project was co-funded by the European Union,” it confirmed on its website, adding an EU logo and explaining that the event provided “leadership training and networking opportunities essential for addressing shared challenges in Europe.”
No Direct Funding
In response to an FWI query about the controversy, a FEMYSO spokesperson stated, “These two volunteer-run and youth-led initiatives organized by FEMYSO are co-funded by the European Union, as part of a project carried out and funded by a consortium to promote youth action against discrimination and for fundamental rights. One of the EU and FEMYSO’s key priorities.”
The spokesperson emphasized that the organization has not received any direct funding from government sources in its response to FWI, stating that “FEMYSO is on the transparency register and publishes its accounts to the Belgian authorities – and as it can be seen there, FEMYSO is not currently receiving any operating, structural, or other grant directly from the EU.”
Youth Organization’s Exclusion from EU Sparks Controversy
FWI reported in July that the European Parliament had excluded FEMYSO from its activities after 33 parliamentarians demanded its removal, citing documentation that links the network to radical Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood. FEMYSO has long been regarded as an Islamist front organization established to advance the cause of religious separatism in Europe.
Marion Maréchal, founder-president of the Identity–Freedoms (IDL) political party, hailed the FEMYSO’s expulsion 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.
The European Centre for Research and Information on the Muslim Brotherhood (CERIF) obtained a copy of a letter to European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, dated May 27, 2025. The letter, written by members of the European Parliament, asks Metsola to bar FEMYSO from the next European Youth Event (EYE).
FEMYSO is not currently receiving any operating, structural, or other grant directly from the EU.
“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.”
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.”
On August 24, it released a statement on its website stating that the EU “has formally clarified in an official response to FEMYSO that no discriminatory decision has been taken against the organization, refuting the false allegations.”
Dossier Reveals Scale of EU Funding to Brotherhood Affiliates
On September 22, 2025, FEMYSO convened its annual conference at the European Parliament, noting that the event “was a direct and necessary response to the escalating hostility and institutional repression targeting Muslim youth across the continent, confronting the policies and practices that undermine our rights and democratic freedoms.”
The youth organization claimed that the conference was supported by distinguishedEuropean parliamentarians Brando Benifei and Cecilia Strada, which proved “from the outset that this was an urgent, cross-institutional effort to challenge the persistent failure of European institutions to uphold their foundational values.”
A 2025 report, titled “Unmasking the Muslim Brotherhood: Brotherism, Islamophobia and the EU,” published by the European Conservatives and Reformists Group in the European Parliament, and co-authored by Bergeaud-Blackler and Tommaso Virgili, found that the EU allows Brotherhood-affiliates to “game the system” by parroting project goals, exploiting administrative loopholes, and “using language that mirrors grant priorities to secure funding.”
Among the “egregious” cases the report identifies are €23 million awarded to the European Network Against Racism between 2007 and 2020 — an organization led for part of that period by Michaël Privot, “a former sworn member of the Muslim Brotherhood who later renounced his affiliation” — and €288,856 to the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organisations between 2007 and 2019.
“This is not speculation. This is not ideology. This is evidence. For years, Brotherhood-affiliated organizations have benefited from EU and national funding streams,” European parliamentarian Charlie Weimers emphasized.
