Age of Extremes: Human Rights Commissioner calls on Europe to step up after USAID freeze
25 February 2025
In a ‘shout-out’ from Strasbourg – US aid freeze is leaving a void. Europe must fill it – Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Michael O’Flaherty called on European states to redouble their efforts to ‘ensure that human rights and democracy do not wither under financial pressure.’
In a public statement following the suspension of international aid by the Trump administration, the Commissioner spelled out the dire consequences of the funding freeze on a wide-range of life-saving and rights-focused initiatives, and called for more robust collective action in response to this crisis.
Beyond the humanitarian consequences, the Commissioner spoke of the direct and immediate impact on human rights work on the ground. An estimated 80% of NGOs in Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans reported being directly affected by the USAID freeze. Several organisations told his office that their core projects, such as those protecting minority rights or supporting victims of war crimes, will disappear if alternative funding is not forthcoming soon. Many projects that support the rights of Roma and other minorities have also been hit by the freeze, “reducing educational initiatives, social services and even litigation in anti-discrimination cases.”
The Commissioner warned that “without viable alternatives, it will be impossible to avert a further intensification of the backlash against equality we are witnessing.” He called on Council of Europe member states to stand firm, uphold fundamental principles and take this opportunity to strengthen their role, collectively and individually, as leaders in the defence and promotion of human rights, democracy and the rule of law. In practical terms, he said states should
“…coordinate responses to save threatened NGOs and their programmes, preserve critical human rights projects and, by doing so, ensure that important democratic gains are not lost. By pooling resources, adjusting existing budgets and prioritising the hardest-hit sectors, member states can maintain the safety net that protects the most vulnerable and the international human rights architecture.”
The Age of Extremes
The problem in Europe goes deeper than the USAID funding freeze and the chaos induced by Trump’s barrage of executive orders, described by the ACLU as “the most systemic and aggressive assault on human rights in U.S. presidential history”. For across Central and Eastern Europe, a good number of European states have scant interest in propping up ‘the international human rights architecture’, and some are overtly committed to shredding the rule of law.
On 7 February, on a national radio broadcast, Orbán promised to chase up organisations in Hungary that received American aid and sought to ‘topple’ his government. He declared: “Now is the moment when these international networks have to be taken down, they have to be swept away. It is necessary to make their existence legally impossible.”
On 22 February, in his annual State of the Nation address, where he emphasized that 2025 must be the year of victory, Orbán: "We will urgently create the constitutional and legal conditions so that we no longer have to watch idly as pseudo-civil organizations serve foreign interests and organize political actions before our eyes, and my government will shut off the Soros network’s funding once and for all.”
The political response to mass protests in neighbouring Slovakia prompted more than 600 mental health professionals in Slovakia to pen an open letter to Prime Minister Robert Fico, calling on him to change his behaviour or quit politics. The letter stated: “Your political conduct is marked by a power-driven authoritarian style, manipulation of facts, lying, denigrating others, and attacking political opponents, journalists, and ordinary citizens who voice dissent.”
Five days later, an open letter signed by 500 representatives of Slovak civil society condemned Fico’s latest authoritarian turn, attacks on civil society, and moves to undermine open governance, free access to information, and the rule of law. The NGOs rejected “the crude and derogatory verbal attacks by government officials on the civil society sector”, saying they were reminiscent of “the former totalitarian regimes that took similar steps to establish an undemocratic political order”.
As for Serbia, the EU’s favourite candidate country –categorised by Freedom House as ‘partly free’ – the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) has steadily eroded political rights and civil liberties, and put serious pressure on independent media, the political opposition, and civil society organizations. According to Freedom House pattern of retribution – involving orchestrated smear campaigns, criminal investigations and intimidation – against high-profile critics of the government, including journalists, academics and celebrities, has contributed to an increasingly hostile environment for free expression and open debate.
Faced with blockades and mass student-led protests since November 2024, President Vučić is claiming on a daily basis that USAID and other ‘foreign agents’ have been orchestrating the unrest. On 17 February, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that the Russian leadership “supports the efforts of the Serbian leadership and President Vučić to prevent destabilisation of the situation in that country”, and condemned gross interference by foreign countries in Serbia’s domestic affairs.
And there is a crisis at the very centre of Europe: no amount of spin can get around the fact that in the 23 February election, more than 10,300,000 Germans voted for Alternative for Germany (AfD), doubling the party’s support and giving it 20.8% of the vote share – the highest showing for far-right extremists since the defeat of Nazi Germany.
While the AfD came in second, in neighbouring Austria, the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) made history in the September 2024 elections and topped the polls with 28.8% of the vote. On the 15 February, Herbert Kickl’s FPÖ gave up on attempts to form what would have been Austria's first far-right-led government since the FPÖ was founded by former Nazis in the 1950s. After five months of an impasse, three of Austria's biggest centrist parties in parliament hinted on 22 February they were on the verge of agreeing to form a coalition government that would side-line the FPÖ for now.
And in Italy under Georgia Meloni, far-right rule has been completely normalised since the country’s first far-right premier since Mussolini was sworn into office in October 2022. Meloni’s party Fratelli d'Italia, currently holds 30% of voting intentions, and her ruling coalition has more than 49% in the polls. Despite attacks on the media and judiciary, and the constant resort to rule by decree, “the Italian prime minister's foothold in public opinion appears to be more solid than ever, as she asserts herself as a leading figure in a worldwide nationalist and reactionary movement with representatives from Buenos Aires to Berlin.”
More Robust Collective Action
Analogies with Weimar Germany remain overwrought, but the electoral advances by far-right extremists are without precedent in post-war Europe. These developments spell bad news for ‘the international human rights architecture’ and are especially ominous for racialised and other visible minorities, including Roma, across the continent. The Commissioner is surely correct to assert that current challenges require more robust collective action.
One measure of the immediate crisis is the extent to which human rights defenders in Europe were dependent upon American funding for their basic operations. There is a deeper and longer crisis that festers inside the growing cluster of Council of Europe member states that have ‘gone rogue’ on democratic norms.
In the immediate term, to fill the void created by the USAID freeze, to maintain “the safety net that protects the most vulnerable and the international human rights architecture”, it is incumbent upon the European Commission, and the majority of states that remain committed to defending democracy in Europe, to step up and provide the resources where they are needed. Because in this new age of extremes, democrats can niether be complacent, nor hesitate to act in the battle to turn back this fascist tide.
