French government protests EU subsidies to Islamic fundamentalist groups

The French government protested the payment of millions of euros in European Union subsidies to Islamic fundamentalist groups.

The French government, while accusing the European Commission of indifference towards Islamist groups, stated that the aforementioned groups are taking full advantage of and abusing the European Commission's naivety.

According to a report by Radio France Internationale, Benjamin Haddad, Minister of State for European Affairs, stated: "Paris calls on the European Union to increase its efforts to combat anti-Semitism and the promotion of a culture of hatred and, to this end, to stop financial support for real and legal figures opposed to European values. Europe's shortcomings in this regard undermine citizens' support for the European Union's initiative."

The French government submitted its objection to this issue to the European Commission, adding: "Organizations that intend to benefit from EU aid must accept and respect the values ​​of the European Union, namely freedom, democracy, equality and human rights."

In April, the newspaper Le Figaro published a detailed report on the financial abuses of the European Union by Islamist groups. The newspaper wrote in its report: "For example, the Council of Europe has allocated around ten million euros in subsidies to a project called the 'European Quran', which aims to prove the claim that the Quran has played an important role in shaping the diversity and religious identity of Europeans from the Middle Ages to the modern period."

Another example is another organization called the “Assembly of Muslim Youth and Student Organizations in Europe,” which is a follower of the “Muslim Brotherhood” and advocates of the Islamic hijab, and has received 210,000 euros in subsidies from the European Union. Among the slogans of this group are: “Just as beauty is in diversity, freedom is in the hijab” or “There is joy in accepting the hijab.”

The newspaper also writes about an Islamic charity called Islamic Relief Worldwide, a Hamas defender, which received around nineteen million euros in subsidies from the European Union between 2014 and 2020. In 2020, one of the organization's officials described Jews as "descendants of monkeys and pigs," and his successor called Hamas "the purest resistance movement in modern history."

The French government also added in its protest to the European Commission: "Gaziantep University in southern Turkey received twelve million euros in subsidies from the European Union in the years 2015-2023, while its administrators supported incestuous marriages (uncles and nieces), called atheists "Satanists" and homosexuals mentally ill, and called for a global intifada."

According to published reports, two million euros in subsidies were also paid to university staff and Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip. The French government is set to submit a written protest to the EU General Council, which meets monthly and is attended by the foreign ministers of the twenty-seven EU member states and a representative of the European Commission.