European Parliament votes 381-167 to map Brotherhood networks, but the listing power lies elsewhere

The European Parliament adopted resolution B10-0424/2026, “on the need for an EU strategy to counter Islamist entryism and the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood network,” in plenary at Strasbourg on Thursday 8 October by 381 votes to 167 with 15 abstentions — a tally reproduced independently by Al Arabiya English, the ECR Group, Le JDD, EJP and Escudo Digital. The text was carried by the French MEP Céline Imart for the European People’s Party, which had adopted a position on political Islam at its Vienna meeting at the end of June, according to Le JDD. EJP reports the majority was assembled from the EPP, the ECR Group, Patriots for Europe and Renew, with Socialists, Greens and other left-wing members voting against. EU Reporter summarises the operative asks: that member states supply information allowing the Council of the European Union to assess whether Brotherhood-linked individuals and organisations meet the criteria for terrorist designation, and that the Commission investigate whether EU funding has reached Brotherhood-associated organisations.

What the resolution does not do is list anyone. Escudo Digital notes the group remains off the EU terror list despite pressure from member states; designation is a Council act requiring unanimity among 27 governments, and no Council, Commission or national response had surfaced by the time of writing. The Cairo outlet Cairo Mubasher nonetheless ran the headline “European Parliament adds the Muslim Brotherhood to the list of terrorist organisations,” which the Parliament has no power to do. The National, which puts the document at ten pages, reports the Parliament urged the Commission to increase monitoring of financial flows on the continent. The Jerusalem Post reports the text asks member states to develop a common approach to identifying signs of entryism, including what it calls the use of “doublespeak” in religious and political discourse. The Brussels wire Agence Europe, reporting the day before the vote, lists the full set of markers in the text: “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.”

Imart told a small group of journalists on 7 October, per Agence Europe, that the Commission should “shut the door on the Muslim Brotherhood in suits and ties,” and called for tighter checks and traceability of EU funds “right to the end of the chain.” EJP carries her line that “Europe must stop funding its enemies with taxpayers' money.” The Belgian ECR member Assita Kanko told EJP: “The fundamentalists are very patient. They infiltrate our democratic system like a poison. Organisations like FEMYSO are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, and they can do their lobbying work undisturbed here” — an allegation by a legislator, not a finding of fact. The ECR Group’s own statement called the vote “an important step towards a tougher and more realistic European response to organisations seeking political influence, public funding and access to decision-makers.” The Middle East Forum, an advocacy organisation rather than a wire, reported that the Parliament “expels” FEMYSO; a non-binding call to exclude is not an expulsion, and MEF’s accompanying figure of 33 MEPs is single-sourced and unverified.

Assessment: The interesting number here is not 381. It is zero: the number of EU governments that have publicly said what they will do with a request addressed to them. The resolution transfers the burden to the Council, where unanimity among 27 makes listing improbable, and to the Commission, where a funding audit is slow, technical and survivable. A parliament that cannot designate has instead built a procedural tripwire — supply evidence, justify your grants, screen your partners — which bites administratively whether or not anyone is ever listed. Watch the first national government to answer in public, and watch whether EJP’s placement of Renew in the majority holds against the official roll-call, which remains unpublished in the record retrieved here.