The European Parliament and Muslim Brotherhood-related entryism: the resolution of 8 October 2026

On 8 October 2026, the European Parliament adopted a resolution devoted to Islamist entryism and the Muslim Brotherhood. This note describes the content of the adopted text, compares the five motions tabled by the political groups and examines what the final text takes from each. The passages marked "Our reading" are reasoned interpretations; the rest describes the content of the documents.

Part I - The adopted text: what are we talking about?

What this resolution is

On 8 October 2026, the European Parliament adopted a resolution entitled "The need for an EU strategy to combat Islamist entryism and the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood network". Result: 381 votes in favour, 167 against, 15 abstentions. To our knowledge, this is the first time the European Parliament has devoted an entire resolution to Islamist entryism and the Muslim Brotherhood.

How the text was voted on

1. The debate. Parliament placed on its agenda a debate on this subject, opened by statements from the Council (the governments) and the Commission. The debate took place in plenary sitting on 7 October 2026.

2. The motions. To close such a debate, each political group may table its own motion for a resolution. Five groups did so, on 29 and 30 September:

The three left-wing groups - socialists (S&D), ecologists (Verts/ALE) and radical left (La Gauche) - did not table any separate motion for a resolution.

3. The choice of the base text. Usually, the groups negotiate a "joint motion for a resolution" among themselves, which replaces their motions. Here, there was none. It was the PPE's motion that was put to the vote, after being amended. The final text keeps the backbone of the PPE motion, modifies certain provisions and adds four paragraphs (4, 8, 10 and 17) as well as seven recitals, whose wording is found essentially in the four other motions (see Part III).

4. The vote. On 8 October, the text was adopted along a clear left-right cleavage. The five right-wing and centre groups voted in favour, by a large majority (PPE 143 in favour, ECR 72, PfE 67, Renew 62, ESN 25). The three left-wing groups voted mostly against (S&D 84 against, Verts 40, La Gauche 35). The majority that usually supports the Commission (PPE, socialists, liberals) did not form. These group-by-group counts are established from the nominal lists in the minutes; any vote corrections have not been checked.

What the text brings

The final text comprises 29 recitals (the findings) and 29 paragraphs (the requests). Its contributions can be summed up in six points.

1. A definition. Islamist entryism is not Islam. The text states that "Islam, as a religion, is not intrinsically political or hostile". Entryism refers to a political strategy that plays on the confusion between religion and a societal project that places religious norms above common law. The Muslim Brotherhood is its "archetype". The text names their European structure: the Council of European Muslims, the "keystone" of the network according to the French Ministry of the Interior, and its financial arm, Europe Trust.

2. The EU terrorist list. Parliament does not call for the listing of the Muslim Brotherhood movement as a bloc. It calls on the Council to list entities and persons linked to the Muslim Brotherhood where the legal criteria are met. It also calls on it not to stop at official structures and to look at front organisations, reconstituted structures and financial relays.

3. European funding. This is the most detailed component. Parliament calls on the Commission to draw up the complete list of funds paid to structures suspected of links with the Muslim Brotherhood: amounts, programmes, justifications, control loopholes. It also calls on it to transmit the grant agreements to Parliament. It demands to be able to follow the money to the final beneficiary, including subcontractors, and to strengthen proactively the verification of compliance with the Union's values by applicants and beneficiaries, by means of prior checks or binding written commitments. Foreign funding involving actors linked to Qatar or Turkey is expressly targeted.

4. Access to the institutions. Parliament calls for organisations linked to the Council of European Muslims to be denied access to the European institutions and removed from the Transparency Register. This register lists interest representatives; registration in it is a condition for certain activities with the institutions, such as certain meetings with their officials or regular access to their premises. It is not a general authorisation to meet them. It calls on the institutions to redouble their vigilance before any invitation, consultation or partnership.

5. Security and movement. Parliament calls for a European list of hate preachers and reinforced checks on the visas and residence permits of persons linked to those on this list. Free movement within the Union must not make it possible to circumvent a dissolution ordered in one country. The European agencies for police (Europol) and judicial cooperation (Eurojust) are mobilised.

6. Society. The text supports national bans on the full-face veil (niqab, burqa). It calls for a European method to identify the signs of entryism: double discourse, financial opacity, misuse of the fight against discrimination. It also calls for supporting Muslim leaders who defend democratic values.

A limitation. The title announces an "EU strategy", but no paragraph calls for the adoption of such a strategy. The text confines itself to a series of specific requests.

What does "call for" mean in this text?

The word recurs constantly in what follows: Parliament "calls for", "invites", "urges". One needs to know what it covers.

Who is calling for this? The European Parliament as an institution, that is, the majority of MEPs who voted for the text.

Does it bind anyone? No. A resolution of this kind is not a law. It creates no legal obligation, for anyone. It is a political stance: Parliament says what it observes and what it expects from others. The verbs used ("calls for", "invites", "urges", "welcomes") mark a degree of insistence, not a degree of constraint. "Urges" is no more binding than "invites".

Who receives these requests, and how far do they reach? Their real weight depends on the addressee.

In short: the resolution carries weight above all where Parliament has its own means, that is, the European budget and its own premises. It carries much less weight over the EU terrorist list, which depends on the unanimity of the governments, and over everything that falls under national laws.

Part II - The five motions compared

1. The heart of the cleavage: where the border between Islam and Islamism lies

From one motion to the next, the vocabulary slides: from "Islamist" to "Islamic", then to "Islam" itself.

2. Listing the Muslim Brotherhood on the EU terrorist list

On procedure: the ECR and the PfE invoke national precedents (the Austrian ban for the ECR, the bans and classifications pronounced in several countries for the PfE). But they call for the listing without spelling out, in their request, the procedural condition relating to a prior decision by a competent authority. The ESN states this condition expressly. This observation is not, on its own, enough to rank the legal robustness of the motions: according to the Council's criteria, the prior decision may come from a member state or a third country, and relate to an investigation, prosecution or conviction.

3. European funding

The named targets. The motions do not target the same organisations:

• The European Network Against Racism (ENAR) is cited by the PPE and the PfE. The PfE calls for its removal from the Transparency Register. Renew, the ECR and the ESN do not name it.
• Islamic Relief Worldwide, a humanitarian NGO, and Al Sharq Forum, a think tank based in Istanbul, appear only in the PPE text.
• The Gaziantep Islamic Science and Technology University (GİBTÜ), in Turkey, a partner of the Erasmus+ programme even though its rector has made remarks favourable to Hamas, is cited by Renew and the PfE under its exact name. The PPE, like the adopted text afterwards, writes "University of Gaziantep", which causes confusion with another institution, the University of Gaziantep (Gaziantep Üniversitesi).
• Officials of the European administration are named only by the ECR: the Commission's coordinator on combating anti-Muslim hatred and a former Arabic-speaking spokesperson of the Commission. The PfE targets the role without naming the person.

The motions present data with different scopes. Renew notes that no direct funding has been paid to the most frequently cited youth organisation since 2019, but that it may have obtained some indirectly, through consortia of associations. The ECR puts forward "tens of millions of euros" paid to the movement as a whole since 2014, without a precise source. The PPE speaks of funding that is continuing, without specifying whether it is direct or indirect. These data concern neither the same beneficiaries, nor the same periods, nor the same financial channels: they do not necessarily contradict each other, but they cannot be compared as they stand.

The methods and tools proposed:

• The PPE is, in our reading, the most technical. It calls for following the money to the final beneficiary, using the existing system for exclusion from European funds, drawing up a quantified inventory of all cases, and transmitting the grant agreements.
• Renew wants a proactive approach, through prior verification or binding written commitments from beneficiaries.
• The ESN calls for a public review and the repayment of misallocated funds, while recalling that restrictions targeting associations fall under national law.
• The ECR calls for suspending all grants to organisations "having links with Islam" - and not with Islamism - for the duration of the checks.
• The PfE demands an "immediate and permanent" suspension for any link, direct or indirect, with "Islamic networks".

4. The other dividing lines

• Immigration. It is absent from the PPE and Renew texts, which confine themselves to visas and entry bans. The ESN cites it as one factor among others. It advocates assimilation and calls for refusing entry or residence to, and where the law permits removing, third-country nationals who incite violence or support Islamist organisations. The ECR calls for the expulsion of all foreign Islamists, the refusal to repatriate jihadists, and invites states to consider stripping Islamists of their nationality. The PfE makes it a direct cause: "mass immigration", withdrawal of refugee status, loss of nationality, accelerated returns, a register of imams.
• The Union's role. Renew wants to attach entryism to the European Democracy Shield, the Commission's mechanism against foreign interference. The PPE relies on the European agencies and the Schengen area. The ESN refuses to let the Islamist threat be used to extend European competences over lawful expression, political debate, religious expression and civil society, notably through an expansion of this Shield; it does not reject the mechanism as a whole. The ECR recalls that public order falls to the states alone. The PfE, though sovereigntist, entrusts new tasks to Europol and to the European anti-money-laundering authority.
• The left-wing parties are implicated by the ECR, the PfE (alliances with the far left, "woke" ideology) and the ESN, which cites cases in Germany and Sweden. The PPE says nothing about it.
• The word "Islamophobia". The PfE calls on the Commission and the states to refrain from it when it risks conflating criticism of Islam with hostility towards Muslims, and to distinguish the two clearly. The PPE describes the fight against discrimination as a possible "Trojan horse". The ESN calls for an end to campaigns and programmes in favour of "diversity" and "anti-racism" within the judicial and police authorities. Renew sees the systematic accusation of Islamophobia as a device of entryism, but also condemns discourse that fuels anti-Muslim hatred.
• Foreign states. Turkey is cited in all five texts. Qatar is cited by the PPE, the ECR and the ESN. Iran appears only in the ECR's, which broadens the scope of the analysis beyond the Muslim Brotherhood. This broadening could be justified: confessional difference does not prevent alliances, and Iranian support for Hamas, which emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood movement, is documented. But the ECR motion does not make this link. It presents Iran as "a major hub of global jihadism", without connecting it to entryism in Europe, which is the subject of the text.

5. What commands consensus

• A shared reference: the report of the French Ministry of the Interior on the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islamism (May 2025), cited by four of the five motions (PPE, Renew, ECR, ESN). The PfE does not cite it by name; it refers more broadly to the reports of the intelligence services, including the DGSI. The 2025 report of the Belgian State Security is taken up by Renew and the ESN.
• The rejection of self-proclaimed representation: no organisation should be recognised as a spokesperson for Muslims merely because it claims to be.
• The demand for transparency on European and foreign funding.
• The protection of persons targeted by Islamists: apostates, dissidents, Muslim women, threatened intellectuals, present in all five texts in various forms.

Part III - What the final text takes from each motion

A note on method. This part rests on the comparison of the texts, not on the amendment procedure. The amendment numbers, their authors and the result of their vote have not been consulted. When a wording of the final text is found in a motion, this establishes a drafting reuse; it does not prove, on its own, that the group concerned "obtained" a concession, nor by what route the passage entered the text. Likewise, a passage "not taken up" was not necessarily rejected by a vote: it may never have been tabled as an amendment.

The text keeps the backbone of the PPE motion, modifies certain provisions and adds four paragraphs: paragraphs 4, 8, 10 and 17. It also comprises seven new recitals. The added or modified passages are found in the following motions:

The PPE core is not taken up as is. Several of its provisions have been substantially modified. The main example is paragraph 16, on visas and residence permits. The PPE motion broadly targeted persons linked to Islamist networks or to organisations promoting radicalisation, antisemitism, separatism or terrorism. The adopted text attaches these reinforced checks to persons linked to persons on the European list of hate preachers that it also calls for creating: the scope is clearly narrowed. Other provisions are broadened, such as paragraphs 1 (religious entryism in general), 12 (exclusion of the Council of European Muslims network) and 23 (prior checks, circumvention of exclusions), or reworded, such as paragraph 7 (see below).

1. The doctrinal framing: that of the Renew motion

• Recital C takes up almost word for word a wording of the Renew motion: "Islam, as a religion, is not intrinsically political or hostile", and "the overwhelming majority" of believers reject violence. The PPE's sentence on the criticism of an ideology is appended to it. The wordings of the ESN (Islamism inseparable from doctrine) and of the PfE ("Islamic organisations") disappear.
• Paragraph 1 condemns "strategies of religious and, in particular, Islamist entryism". The framing of the Renew motion is found here. It is supplemented by the list of rights that this entryism threatens: women's rights, sexual and reproductive rights, the rights of LGBTIQ+ people. This vocabulary, present in the Renew motion alone, thus coexists in the text with support for the ban on the burqa.
• Several requests of the Renew motion are not taken up: the mention of Ordo Iuris, the strategy against all forms of religious entryism, and the condemnation of discourse that diverts this fight to fuel anti-Muslim hatred. All that remains is the PPE's sentence that the protection of Muslims against discrimination is "a democratic obligation". A European directive against racial discrimination has, moreover, been added to the text's references.

2. The points where the text takes up the motions further to the right from the ECR, the ESN and the PfE

• Criticism of Islam (paragraph 7). The PPE wrote that the fight against discrimination must not prevent "any criticism of political Islam". The adopted French text says "any criticism of Islam". The change is significant: it aligns with the ECR and the ESN, which defend the right to criticise the religion itself. It remains to be verified in the English version whether this is a voted amendment or a translation shortcut.
• The full-face veil (paragraph 8). The paragraph takes up almost in full a wording of the ECR motion. Only the reference to the Italian government disappears, and the protection "in particular of women" is added. It is the only general clothing measure in the text. The ordinary veil, which the PfE targeted, does not feature in it.
• The religious dress of minors (recital F). The theme features, in a harsher form, in a PfE recital on the veil imposed on young girls. The word "veil" disappears in favour of "religious dress". It is now only a possible sign of influence, in a recital that makes no request.
• The exclusion of the Council of European Muslims network (paragraph 12). This is the most concrete reuse of a wording of the ECR motion. Parliament calls for all organisations linked to this Council to be denied access to the institutions and removed from the Transparency Register. The ECR motion already called for this exclusion "pending the listing" of the Muslim Brotherhood on the EU terrorist list: it therefore did not make it conditional on that listing. The final text, for its part, no longer mentions the EU terrorist list at this point. Like any request in the resolution, the exclusion is not applicable in itself: its implementation requires separate decisions, access to the institutions and registration in the register each obeying their own rules. Removal from the register did not feature in the ECR motion. The motions of Renew, more general, and of the PfE, which targeted the anti-racism network ENAR, concerned neighbouring requests.
• The legal consequences (paragraph 17). The paragraph echoes, in a toned-down form, the PfE's proposal to withdraw refugee status and social benefits from persons who promote Islamist ideology. What remains are "appropriate legal and administrative consequences", including for access to public funding, social benefits and institutional support, to be set by each state in compliance with Union law and national law. The withdrawal of refugee status and expulsion disappear.

3. What was not taken up from the motions further to the right from the ECR, the ESN and the PfE

Reminder: "not taken up" does not mean "rejected by a vote".

• The listing of the Muslim Brotherhood as a bloc on the EU terrorist list, called for by the ECR and the PfE, is not taken up. All that remains is the PPE's wording: entities and persons, if the legal criteria are met.
• The general requests on immigration and expulsions are not taken up, nor is the loss of nationality, the refusal to repatriate jihadists, or the accelerated return procedures. The text does, however, deal with visas, residence permits, checks at the external borders and free movement.
• The officials named explicitly by the ECR, as well as the role implicated by the PfE, are not mentioned in the adopted text.
• The suspension of all grants to organisations linked to "Islam", called for by the ECR, is not taken up; the text retains the inventory and the tracking of funds proposed by the PPE.
• The ideological lineages put forward by the ECR (Hamas, al-Qaeda, Islamic State, a citation of the preacher Youssef al-Qaradawi) disappear. All that remains is the mention, coming from the PPE, of Hamas "historically descended" from the Muslim Brotherhood.
• The PfE's own programme is not taken up: a register of imams, monitoring by the anti-money-laundering authority, halal and Islamic finance, clandestine mosques, a reservation on the use of the word "Islamophobia", criticism of the Commission's anti-racist strategy.
• The ESN's sovereigntist positions are not taken up. The text mentions the European Democracy Shield without taking up the reservations expressed by the ESN on the extension of European competences.

4. No strategy proposed

The announced strategy. The title demands an "EU strategy", but no paragraph calls for the adoption of such a strategy. The Renew motion did: it called on the Union to adopt a strategy (paragraph 6). This paragraph was not taken up. The closest is the "European method" for identifying the signs of entryism (paragraph 6 of the adopted text).

Dr. Florence Bergeaud-Blackler
Anthropologist, Research Fellow at the CNRS (HDR)
Founding President of CERIF - Centre Européen de Recherche et d'Information sur le Frérisme
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