Strasbourg votes on a Brotherhood entryism strategy as Florida’s state designation nears its deadline

The text before the Strasbourg plenary, logged as 2026/2868(RSP) and drafted by French EPP member Céline Imart, calls for “the development of a European methodology to identify signs of Islamist entryism” — among them, per the draft, “confusion between religion and politics, institutional doublespeak, financial opacity, the recurrence of certain partnerships, proximity to already identified networks, the production of activist reports, the reconstitution of structures and the instrumentalisation of anti-discrimination frameworks.” Briefing a small group of journalists on 7 October, Agence Europe reported, Imart called on the Commission to “shut the door on the Muslim Brotherhood in suits and ties,” naming the organisation FEMYSO, which has previously denied Brotherhood links and whose response had not been obtained at filing. She asked the Commission to tighten traceability of EU funds “right to the end of the chain,” said evangelical entryism was “not the subject” of her text, and said she was assembling a majority stretching “from the Renew Europe group to the Patriots.”

Two accounts of the same draft do not match. Agence Europe describes a methodology-and-funding instrument; the Abu Dhabi outlet Al-Ain, in a 7 October piece bylined Hossam Hassan, said it had obtained a copy of the draft and that it asks the High Representative to propose to the European Council that the Brotherhood be added to the EU terrorist list — a claim that belongs to Al-Ain, not to the record. The provenance runs through Paris: on 22 January 2026 the French National Assembly adopted a resolution inviting the Commission to propose a Council listing of “the Muslim Brotherhood movement and its leaders,” resting on an Interior Ministry report, and in July the French government launched a strategy including the disbanding of endowment funds and a new asset-freeze mechanism. Per oral question O-000009/2026, the Commission has stuck to leaving the initiative solely to member states.

In Florida the same ambition has already cleared a legislature. On 29 September DeSantis and the Cabinet, with no public testimony, applied terrorist designations to more than 90 groups, three of them as domestic organisations, including CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood and antifa; the governor posted that the designations were made “per the anti-sharia law signed earlier this year.” HB 1471 took effect 1 July; the designation takes effect 5 November absent an injunction. On 2 October CAIR-Foundation and CAIR Florida filed for emergency relief before Judge Mark Walker, who on 4 March had already enjoined Executive Order 25-244 on First Amendment grounds, a ruling DeSantis appealed to the Eleventh Circuit. Hina Shamsi of the ACLU, speaking outside the Cabinet meeting, said: “There is nowhere in that notice any allegation or evidence that CAIR has engaged in any violent or dangerous act.”

Assessment: Watch the gap between the two accounts of the Strasbourg draft before treating either as the text. Al-Ain is UAE state-aligned and has an interest in a listing instruction existing; Agence Europe’s version is the more modest and the more likely to survive Renew’s amendments, since Imart’s own concession — that the text “is not aimed, under any circumstances, at the Muslim community” — is the price of that coalition. The deeper divergence is structural. Washington designates chapter by chapter; Florida and the European right designate networks. Network-wide designation needs a single coherent organisation to point at, which is precisely what Judge Walker’s March ruling, and the documented dissent of former State Department official Jason Blazakis inside Florida’s own Cabinet package, declined to assume.