The European Union on Monday unveiled an “anti-racism” plan that presses member states to censor online “hate speech” and adopt an “intersectional approach” to “structural racism.”
The plan, which also calls for training on “unconscious bias” and “microaggression,” is likely to intensify the Trump administration’s diplomatic fusillade against European hate speech laws. It also illustrates the degree to which American racial politics have been exported to the European Union.
In an antiracism plan from 2020, the European Commission endorsed Black Lives Matter and described racism as a “global problem.”
“It is not enough to be against racism,” the 2020 plan said, echoing the now-famous formulation of American author Ibram Kendi. “We have to be active against it.”
The new plan—”Union of Equality: Anti-Racism Strategy 2026-2030″—fleshes out what such activity should look like. In a section on “protecting people from hate crime and hate speech,” the document proposes legislation to “harmonise definitions of online hate offences” across all 27 EU member states, citing the “absence of progress” on “tackling hatred.” It also calls for EU-wide teacher guidelines on “tackling disinformation” and promoting “diversity and inclusion, as well as promoting diversity in the teaching profession itself.”
The plan comes one month after the Trump administration sanctioned a former European commissioner, Thierry Breton, for his role in crafting the Digital Services Act (DSA), an EU law that requires social media platforms to remove speech deemed illegal by EU member states. Since those states do not have the same First Amendment protections as the United States, the law imposes what Trump administration officials describe as a form of “extraterritorial censorship,” forcing U.S. platforms to censor Americans if they want to operate in the European Union.
One of the officials making that case has been Sarah Rogers, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and pubic affairs. Rogers, a former First Amendment lawyer, declined to comment on the specifics of the European Union’s antiracism strategy. But she drew a link between the American concept of “antiracism” and the sort of speech restrictions her office has been fighting.
“Racism has existed around the world and throughout history, but ‘antiracism’ is a recent American export rejected by American voters,” Rogers told the Washington Free Beacon. “One of its most consistent claims is that racial spoils, not markets or merit or moral sense, should structure our economy, our laws, and even our ‘micro’-level social interactions. This ideology impairs free expression, workplace fairness, and other Western values.”
The plan promises to entrench the censorship regime that has made the European Union a punchline, and a punching bag, for many conservatives and free speech activists. Europeans have been criminally prosecuted for quoting the Bible, criticizing COVID-19 lockdowns, and stating that human skeletons can be only male or female. One German woman even received a harsher sentence than a convicted rapist after she referred to him as a “disgraceful rapist pig,” spending two nights in jail over the insult.
The rapist, who had gang-raped a 15-year-old girl along with eight other attackers, served no time due to youth sentencing laws.
The plan nonetheless calls to “strengthen the EU’s criminal law framework against hate offences”—implying that existing punishments are inadequate—and to “continue to monitor and enforce the DSA.” It also suggests member states develop a “working definition of structural racism,” adopt an “intersectional approach” to policymaking, and “offer anti-bias and diversity training” to all public servants.
“Consistent with all Union of Equality strategies, the Anti-Racism Strategy is based on an intersectional policy approach to address the complexity of the inequalities experienced by individuals who face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination,” the plan reads. “This Strategy is a decisive step towards a genuine Union of Equality where everyone can live, lead, and thrive without being exposed to racism, be it anti-Black racism, antigypsyism, antisemitism, anti-Asian racism or anti-Muslim hatred.”
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