European ChristenUnie worked with right-wing radicals for a more conservative Europe

The European Christian Political Movement (ECPM), the European party of the ChristenUnie, cooperated with far-right hate groups between 2013 and 2019. The party provided financial support to the radical right lobby group Agenda Europe, with Ku Klux Klan and pro-Putin members, and actively participated in discussions on how to make Europe more conservative and fight LGBTQIA+ rights, abortion, and euthanasia, De Groene Amsterdammer and Investico reported.

De Groene Amsterdammer and Investico investigated almost 4,000 leaked emails from Agenda Europe. They found a flood of racist and homophobic statements, misinformation, and Russian propaganda. They also found active involvement from the ECPM, which now told De Groene Amsterdammer that it “regrets” cooperating with the far-right lobby from 2013 to 2019.

Agenda Europe’s membership list includes Austin Ruse (chairman of C-fam, an anti-LGBTQIA+ hate group), Bogdan Stanciu (manager of the Romanian branch of Altermedia, a network of websites founded by former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke), and ChristenUnie parliamentarian Don Ceder. The leak included no emails sent by the Dutch MP himself, but he is mentioned in a list of Agenda Europe's social media accounts. The membership list also includes several members of the ECPM. Leo van Doesburg is the most active - he acted as one of Agenda Europe’s group moderators and actively participated in most discussions.

The ECPM also financed Agenda Europe events using European party subsidies, the investigative journalists found. That included a multi-day strategy summit in Munich in 2014, where a 140-page manifesto called “Restoring the Natural Order” was presented. The tactics mentioned there included presenting Christians as victims of discrimination, obtaining subsidies, and “adopting the language of the enemy” by using progressive terms and avoiding religious arguments.

The researchers also found a lot of Russian misinformation on the online group, including after Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014. When a participant protested the fake news after the first invasion, ECPM member Leo van Doesburg calmed the situation by asking people to stick to the topics at hand - fighting abortion and LGBTQIA+ rights.

“This is such a clear example of Russian soft power,” Niels Drost, a researcher at the Clingendael Institute, told De Groene Amsterdammer. “The Orthodox faith and the conservative values that go with it are a super-effective means of arousing sympathy for Russia abroad, or at least bringing them on board as a cooperation partner.”

ChristenUnie and ECPM gave De Groene Amsterdammer a joint response, saying that they distance themselves from racist, homophobic, and xenophobic statements in the Agenda Europe group. Those statements were made “in a personal capacity,” the parties said.

The ECPM said it “regrets” financially supporting Agenda Europe events. Until 2019, the ECPM “operated much more as a lobby party,” it said, though the Groene Amsterdammer pointed out that it had been a political party for about 10 years by then. “We are now only concerned with European politics, and Agenda Europe does not fit in with that line.”

ChristenUnie parliamentarian Don Ceder said one of his email addresses “ended up in a mailing group.” According to him, that likely happened due to his studies on the subject of legal protection of unborn life and the “various organizations” he spoke to for this purpose. He did not respond to De Groene Amsterdammer's questions on the content of the emails or members of the group.