In January 2025 the University of Helsinki’s CCINDLE team organized a Feminist Democracy Lab at the European Parliament (EP) in Brussels, featuring key actors from across the parliament and EU-level intersectionality advocacy. The Lab aimed to co-create feminist and anti-racist solutions to contemporary threats to democracy, gender equality, and intersectionality. In the CCINDLE project, Feminist Democracy Labs are social and research-oriented activities aimed at creating transnational peer learning communities, where feminist actors engage in participatory dialogues. These are designed to address democratic threats from anti-gender movements and share innovative approaches to resistance for feminist, Black, queer movements, and institutional actors.
The participants at our Lab were politicians, activists, and researchers. They discussed the new outlook of the EP after the last election in June 2024, the increasing intake of far-right MEPs, and the overall shift towards right-wing politics. Particular attention was given to the effect this has on the balance of power for gender equality and intersectionality policymaking in a parliament that is referred to as championing equality issues.
The new outlook of the European Parliament post-election
One year into the tenth term, some figures are particularly telling. While the ninth term (2019 to 2024) counted 41% of its elected membership as women, the current term records a lower percentage with 38.6% of MEPs women. Last year’s election marked a fracture in the slow but steady increase of women’s representation observed between 1979 and 2019. While a handful of member states champion gender balance, others have a national delegation still largely dominated by male MEPs. In the top five for female representation, we find Sweden, Finland, France, Spain and Hungary, with respectively 61.9%, 60%, 50.62%, 50% and 47.62% of women MEPs. In the bottom three, we find Cyprus, Malta and Romania with respectively 0%, 16.67% and 18.18% of women MEPs. All of these statistics have been made public by the European Parliament and are available here, while the 2025 overview from CCINDLE partner Johanna Kantola may also be of interest.
Another important figure is 1%. For the first time in 2024, the EP officially recorded one MEP identifying with a gender “other” than women or men. However, despite efforts from ENAR to shed light on the representation of racialized minorities and MEPs of colour, the EP does not record such numbers. In academic research such as a 2023 paper from Kantola and colleagues, the EP has been suggested to be institutionally racialized and normatively white.
In the EP, national representatives and national political parties work in bigger transnational political groups. The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) remains the biggest group, with 26.15% of all MEPs, followed by the Socialists and Democrats Group (S&D) with 18.92%. The groups of the liberal Renew (10.43%) and Greens/EFA (7.37%) both lost a great number of seats in the last elections, while the Left (6.40%) grew by seven seats. Far-right and radical populist (RRP) groups were successful across Europe, with a few exceptions. With new incoming RRP MEPs, two new political groups were established. The new Patriots for Europe Group (PfE) is now the third biggest group with a total of 85 MEPs, with PfE followed closely by the European Conservatives and Reformist group (ECR) with 80 MEPs. The second new group, the far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations group (ESN) is the smallest and home to Germany’s AfD.
Political groups are key players in the EP parliamentary and policy machinery. Each is differently positioned in relation to gender equality and intersectionality, with important consequences for future policies at EU level. With insights from our Feminist Democracy Lab participants, we will discuss what this means for gender equality and intersectionality in the last section. Firstly, let’s take a look at the EP’s specialized Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality – the FEMM.
The situation in FEMM
The FEMM Committee has played a central role in the EP by putting forward new ideas on gender and intersectional equality, by strengthening the European Commission’s legislative proposals in the field of gender equality, and by mainstreaming gender in policy fields other than gender. Until this legislative term, a progressive coalition of left-green-liberal parties played a strong role in the parliament. In the new parliament, this has changed. The power balance in the FEMM has also tipped more to the side of those who oppose gender and gender equality.
Of the 77 MEPs in FEMM twenty MEPs belong to political groups that are hostile to gender equality and intersectionality (PfE, ESN, ECR); nineteen MEPs belong to the EPP, which as a group is divided or contradictory for gender equality; and two are non-attached members. Some MEPs from the EPP group tend to strictly oppose some issues, such as abortion rights, and defend the status quo on others, such as LGBTIQ+ rights (see here for more information). Notably, key differences exist within the EPP regarding national party delegations with, for instance, MEPs from Finland being more supportive of gender equality and intersectionality than others. Feminist MEPs from the EPP in FEMM face the challenge of carrying their political group with them in the final vote in the plenary.
In a nutshell, out of the 77 MEPs in FEMM, over half strictly oppose, tend to oppose or defend the status quo on gender equality and intersectionality issues; according to an estimation drawn from the list of members made public on FEMM’s webpage here. Less than half of the MEPs belong to political groups on the centre left (namely the Left, Greens/EFA, S&D, and Renew) which are known for supporting gender equality and intersectional issues. Yet, it is important to note that within these political groups too there might be political tensions on trans rights, sex work and surrogacy (see Grundell’s 2025 article, for example).
Power balances shift with complications for gender equality
Participants in our Feminist Democracy Lab expressed their views on the growing difficulties of pushing for progress in FEMM. They linked this to a rise in hate speech and a normalization of far-right rhetoric in the EP, a growing opposition even on small things, and a frustration regarding the growing representation of women in far-right groups seeking to curtail rights.
In line with the goals of the CCINDLE project, we discussed the ways in which to respond within parliaments to such situations (see also Kantola and Lombardo’s 2024 article). Participants reported new strategies such as seeking broader coalitions with civil society organizations and mapping MEPs to know who to connect with, while being particularly careful about possible hidden agendas. The objective of building broader coalitions is also fulfilled by focusing on moderate conservatives. Some shared the insights that feminist fights in FEMM are becoming increasingly difficult, as MEPs from the EPP are successfully seeking to erase the word “feminist” from resolutions; drawing attention to the fact that these MEPs are willing to defend women’s rights but not feminist fights – at the expense of, for instance, the rights of trans people. We outlined these response strategies in more detail in the policy brief produced for the CCINDLE project after the event. The activists who participated in the event described how their advocacy was being targeted on all fronts by anti-gender movements, with a diversity of attacks exacerbated by cuts to their EU funding. Activists are facing additional challenges in seeking new allies from the EPP group, emphasising an increasing opposition to gender equality and intersectionality advocacy and policymaking in the biggest group of the parliament.
Looking towards the future and the strategies feminist and intersectionality policymakers and advocates hope to put in place, the Lab’s participants emphasized the imperatives of involving marginalized communities within the policymaking process directly, pushing for greater gender justice in political groups and particularly at the leadership level, and adopting a truly intersectional approach to policymaking at all levels of policymaking. This starts with building bridges between intergroups and committees within the EP, to highlight activities and champion intersectional issues.
Author: Valentine Berthet, University of Helsinki. 23rd June 2025