Resisting anti-gender politics in the Council of the EU

Opposition to gender+ equality has intensified across Europe, with radical right populist (RRP) governments moving from mainly indirect objections to open, value-based resistance to any initiatives in favor of gender+ equality promotion within European institutions. Their opposition relies on formal and informal norms-breaking, in the European Parliament (Ahrens et al., 2021; Kantola and Lombardo, 2020; Kantola and Miller, 2021), as well as in the Council of the European Union (CEU) (Coman, 2024; Zaun and Ripoll Servent, 2023). The Council, as the key intergovernmental arena in the EU, is subjected to consensus-seeking culture and diplomatic norms, which are both at odds with RRP governments’ strategies (Taggard, 2018; Visnovitz and Jenne, 2021; Wajner and Giurlando, 2023). These strategies have particularly affected the domain of gender+ equality, where RRP governments have engaged in systematic disruptive governance (Beaudonnet and Jacquot, 2025). To understand their effects on this institution and the impact of their decisions and behavior on gender+ equality policy-making, it is therefore crucial to investigate how other governments react to these disruptive strategies. This paper, thus, examines how Council actors adapt to and resist the politicisation and obstruction of gender+ equality and what these dynamics mean for EU governance. We draw on qualitative evidence from three types of data: CEU primary sources (2009–2024), including member states’ statements and presidency conclusions; Agence Europe news briefs that track conflicts related to gender+ equality; and a series of interviews with policy actors involved in CEU negotiations. Our analysis highlights how “like-minded” member states organize themselves, through formal and informal practices, to resist gender backsliding in the CEU, but at a cost. Indeed, these resilience practices result in lengthier bargains, dilution of language, anticipatory self-censorship, and what practitioners describe as “gender fatigue.”