Michael O’Flaherty, the commissioner for human rights at the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, gave an interview with EUObserver: O’Flaherty: state of human rights in Europe ‘worst in my professional life’. O’Flaherty said among other things:

What’s new, and which makes things all the more disturbing is the extent to which people in power are willing to distance themselves from human rights obligations

He is very concerned about the situation of civil society in Europe:

I’m very concerned about the situation of civil society in multiple European countries at the moment. (…)

The first one is the so-called foreign funding laws which are which, which are not the benign oversight laws that governments would typically present them as. They’re highly discriminatory, and they serve to suffocate certain organisations, and as a contagion of them. (…)
And again, it looks to me like another instrument to close down the operation of those bits of civil society that might annoy the state. (…)

So this is a scary further dimension. So why do I care so much about civil society? Because it’s the blood of any society. Without civil society, services don’t get delivered without civil society, our authorities don’t get challenged to do a better job. And by the way, from the context of human rights, without civil society, we don’t have the bright ideas that advance the human rights protection systems in the way that they’ve developed over all those years.

Addition 15 December 2025
The Special committee on the European Democracy Shield on 8 December 2025 had ‘Gulf states’ funding of political and religious networks in the EU, exchange of views‘ on the agenda, it is postponed.
Why does the committee only look at money flows from rich countries/rich people in the Gulf States and not at undesirable money flows from other rich countries/individuals, for example from the US?