EU Unveils Major Bloc-Wide ‘Anti-Racism’ Strategy

Critics warn the policy risks embedding ‘cultural socialist’ ideas into law, policing speech, and shifting Europe away from equal treatment under the law.

European Union flags flutter outside the European Commission headquarters in Brussels on July 16, 2025. Yves Herman/Reuters

The European Commission (EC) has unveiled a new anti-racism strategy, declaring its ambition to build a “Europe free from racism.”

The strategy, announced on Jan. 20, sets out to combat racism “in all its forms” by strengthening enforcement of existing anti-discrimination laws; addressing barriers in education, employment, health care, and housing; and building anti-racism partnerships at every level of society.

The plan adopts an “intersectional approach” to anti-racism, a framework that views discrimination as the product of overlapping identity categories and structural power relations.

In a statement, Hadja Lahbib, commissioner for equality, preparedness, and crisis management, said that “open and inclusive societies are under pressure, from inside and outside Europe.”

“Racism locks doors,“ she said. ”Europe’s first-ever Anti-Racism Strategy is about opening them, choosing leadership over silence.”

Critics of the strategy told The Epoch Times that it will likely be “used to police speech” and is a “slide to cultural socialist ideas.”

Anti-Racism

The strategy builds on existing EU anti-racism policies rather than introducing an entirely new framework.

But the EC said it wants all 27 member states to provide comprehensive training programs to help civil servants “recognise and tackle racial bias, while fostering greater cultural awareness and sensitivity.”

It also wants all European educators to “address teacher training and professional development on diversity and inclusion, as well as promoting diversity in the teaching profession itself.”

The EC also “encourages the development of local anti-racism action plans in regions, cities, schools and community centres” and suggests that each state appoint a “national anti-racism coordinator.”

Member states do not all share the same definitions of hate crime and hate speech, but the commission is seeking “to harmonize definitions of online hate offences” across the bloc.

In a Jan. 20 post on X announcing the initiative, the EC repeated the phrase “Europe Free From Racism” nine times.

Anti-racism is associated with critical race theory, which is linked to Marxist ideology. It defines class struggle as being between “oppressors” (white people) and the “oppressed” (everyone else), much as Marxism reduced human history to a struggle between the “bourgeoisie” and the “proletariat.”

For example, prominent American critical race theory advocate Ibram X. Kendi has said there is no such thing as being non-racist or race-neutral. In other words, one must support “anti-racist” policies and actively identify and confront perceived racism in everyday life in order not to be a racist.

“Babies are taught to be racist or antiracist—there’s no neutrality,” the Boston University professor wrote in his children’s book “Antiracist Baby.”

‘Cultural Socialist Ideas’

“The EU’s report is extremely tone deaf and very revealing,” Eric Kaufmann, professor of politics at the University of Buckingham, told The Epoch Times.

“The progressive activists at the European Commission did not get the memo that it’s not 2020 anymore.”

Kaufmann is a leading researcher of left-liberal cultural radicalism and cultural socialism, as well as the director of the Centre of Heterodox Social Science.

He said in an emailed statement that the report “betrays an illiberal moralising worldview with no grasp of the fact that anti-racism without guardrails winds up discriminating on the basis of race, suppressing free speech and asphyxiating the historical pride and culture of Europe’s ethnic majorities, who form a global minority of 10 percent of the world.”

“There is a seamless slide from consensus values such as non-discrimination and opposing harassment to cultural socialist ideas like ‘positive action’ (aka anti-white discrimination) and suppressing free speech and expressions of majority ethnicity and nationhood,” Kaufmann said.

The idea of “institutional racism” was introduced by Black Power activists and leaders Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) and Charles V. Hamilton in their 1967 book, “Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America.”

Kaufmann said the term “institutional racism” is used but not defined in the report.

“The authors then go on to provide example after example of traditional individual-level racism, neglecting the fact that the critical race theorists who developed the idea of ‘institutional racism’ meant it to refer to ‘racism without racists,’” he said.

“No evidence of the latter is provided, showing that the authors simply use the term as a sophisticated wrapper which they hope can protect their shallow claims from scientific scrutiny and falsification.”

‘It Will Be Used to Police Speech’

Jacob Reynolds, head of policy for Brussels-based think tank MCC Brussels, told The Epoch Times that he believes that the policy “has got nothing to do with racism” and is “a classic example of how the EU proceeds to amass for itself more powers to regulate orderly life and get involved in politics.”

“This is not [anti-racism], as ordinary people understand it,“ Reynolds said. ”This is the kind of woke [diversity, equity, and inclusion] agenda that has come to dominate the way that lots of civil servants, lots of academics, lots of civil society organizations think.”

“EU in this strategy is clearly not concerned about the things that ordinary people would understand as racism, discrimination against people on the basis of the [color] of their skin, but is actually about regulating thought,” he told The Epoch Times.

“Everybody would support the fight against racism, and people are outraged when there are actual instances of racism. But this will be used to close down debates on questions people might have about Islamization. It will be used to police speech. It will be used to delegitimize those of us who have questions about the open-door migration policies.”

CERV

Many of the policies will be supported by the Citizens, Equality, Rights, and Values Programme (CERV), the European Union’s main civil society-funding instrument for funding nongovernmental organizations and civil society actors, alongside some public bodies.

For example, the EC said it will continue to “support projects exploring the legacy of Europe’s global history, including colonialism, and its impact on societies” under the CERV program.

CERV is set for a significant increase. Under the EU’s next seven-year budget cycle (2028–2034), the program is set to merge with other initiatives into a new framework called AgoraEU, with a proposed CERV-plus funding stream of 3.6 billion euros (about $4.2 billion) that more than doubles its previous budget.

However, Reynolds said he believes that the “real purpose of CERV” is to “create a fake parallel society that supports everything that the bureaucrats in the European Commission support.”

“It’s become very clear to us that this is quite a naked way in which the European Commission attempts to kind of steer the narrative on certain issues by funding so-called civil society groups, astroturfing campaigns that make it look like there is a kind of grassroots demand for whatever it is that they’re trying to push,” he said.

European Network Against Racism (ENAR), a major nongovernmental organization that is funded by the EU, said the EU was not going far enough with the anti-racism policy.

‘One of the EU’s Founding Values’

In a recent post, ENAR said the strategy is “disconnected from the violent realities of discriminatory policing, securitisation, and a shrinking civic space, ultimately recycling old approaches.”

“As the largest anti-racism network in Europe, representing over 140 member organisations, we will work with institutions and [civil society organization] partners to ensure it achieves more and meets the urgency of the moment in Europe,” ENAR stated.

An EC spokesman told The Epoch Times by email, “[The strategy] will strengthen our enforcement of existing laws and take action when rules are not respected.

“All forms of racism are unacceptable, regardless of the group which is targeted, and the aim of the EU Anti-racism strategy is to tackle all forms of racism,” he wrote. “Equality is a fundamental right of every human in our Union, and one of the EU’s founding values.”

The spokesman said that regarding funding, projects under CERV are allocated mainly through action and operating grants, which go directly to “address needs on the ground.”

Eligible entities from all EU member states and participating third countries can apply to the “open, competitive, and transparent calls for proposals,” he told The Epoch Times.

“Proposals are evaluated against well-defined criteria, which are published in the calls for proposals,” he said. “Only the highest-ranking proposals get funded.”

He also said the EU legal framework is “carefully balanced to ensure the right to freedom of expression, while recognising the harmful effects of publicly inciting violence or hatred.”