Report: Beneath the surface

For more than a decade, gender identity has been reshaping Europe’s laws, policies and institutions — promoted through guidelines, strategies and soft-law instruments that bypass democratic scrutiny.

This shift has far-reaching consequences: undermining women’s rights, removing safeguards for children and adolescents, obscuring data and statistics, and eroding free speech. Using deliberately opaque language, it reshapes the legal and political framework for millions of Europeans.

Beneath the surface exposes how this ideological transformation has taken hold within the EU and the Council of Europe, who the key actors are, and what it means for democratic accountability. It provides the clarity, evidence and courage needed to open debate and restore reality as the foundation of human rights.