Nine months of Brotherhood bans have produced motions, referrals and one instrument that designates nothing
The Dutch parliament voted to ban the group in March and the government has shown nothing for it. In Jordan, seven former officials referred to prosecutors in January remain the only case being decided by a judge.
Executive Order 14362, signed by President Trump on 24 November 2025 and published in the Federal Register on 28 November (Vol. 90, No. 227, p. 55033), does not proscribe anything: it sets in motion a process by which certain chapters or subdivisions shall be considered for designation under INA §219 and as Specially Designated Global Terrorists. The designations came separately — three chapters on 13 January, Sudan in March, and a financial track running through OFAC. On 23 July, Treasury designated a senior Egyptian Brotherhood official, Mahmoud al-Abyari, under E.O. 13224 for having acted for or on behalf of the Egyptian Brotherhood, alongside three further individuals and three entities, among them Indonesia-based Tujah Bulah Global and Gaza-based Madad Palestine Charitable Society, both described by Treasury as Hamas fundraising fronts. Secretary Scott Bessent said those enabling Hamas “will be exposed, sanctioned, and held accountable.”
In Europe nothing has been banned. On 17 March the Tweede Kamer approved a PVV motion seeking a ban on the Brotherhood and related organisations by 76 votes in a 150-seat chamber, ANP reported. CDA MP Tijs van den Brink said on the record that according to the AIVD the group does not take the typical form of a terror organisation and therefore cannot be banned; the service does not currently regard it as a structured organisation in the Netherlands. Nearly six months on, THE FILES has found no evidence the Dutch government has acted. In Jordan, where the Interior Ministry under Mazin al-Farrayeh outlawed the group on 23 April 2025 and seized assets, prosecutors on 12 January referred seven former Brotherhood officials to the Attorney General on money-laundering and unauthorised-fundraising charges, The New Arab reported. Trial dates, names and custody status are not public.
France has banned events rather than the organisation: a Paris gathering cancelled on 3 April, which Imam Hassen Chalghoumi — not any French authority — characterised as “the largest Muslim Brotherhood gathering in Europe,” and a further ban in Nantes in May, where authorities said figures linked to the Brotherhood were expected and that statements at the event “could constitute criminal offenses.”
Assessment: Two different things are being counted as the same thing. Sanctions designations are self-executing and have already bitten: names, entities, blocked property. Parliamentary motions and ministerial declarations are instructions and announcements, and in the Dutch case the domestic intelligence service has publicly explained why the instruction cannot easily be carried out. Distrust any tally that adds them together. The genuinely consequential file is the least covered: the Jordanian seven are the only place where a chapter’s legal position is being settled by a court rather than a minister, and the 24-hour gap between the Amman referral on 12 January and Washington’s designation of the Jordanian chapter on 13 January has never been explained by either government.