Europe and Central Asia

Ratings overview

The year saw continued backsliding on civic and democratic freedoms in Europe and Central Asia, with growing restrictions on CSOs and protests fuelling an urgent civic space crisis. Of the region’s 54 countries, civic space is now rated as closed in six, repressed in five, obstructed in eight, narrowed in 17 and open in 18.

The CIVICUS Monitor has tracked a steady decline: in 2019, 58.3 per cent of Europe and Central Asia’s population lived in countries rated as open or narrowed. By 2025, that figure has collapsed to just 26.5 per cent, meaning far fewer people can exercise fundamental freedoms without significant barriers. This shift is largely due to intensifying crackdowns on HRDs and protests in some of Europe’s largest democracies.

In particular, authorities have repeatedly used the Separatism Law, which requires associations to comply with ‘Republican values’ and refrain from disrupting public order, to disband associations and restrict their access to funding. In June 2025, the Council of Ministers initiated dissolution proceedings against the antifascist movement La Jeune Garde and the Palestine solidarity group Urgence Palestine. In September, leaders of the Belgium-based CSO Collective Against Islamophobia in Europe, along with members of a French partner organisation, were arrested, questioned and placed under judicial supervision with restrictions on their activities, reflecting a broader pattern of state harassment against Muslim organisations under the Separatism Law.

Authorities have met public mobilisations, including environmental protests, protests in solidarity with Palestine and mass, social-media driven actions against proposed economic austerity measures with bans, militarised police and hundreds of detentions.

Political and social pressures have gone hand in hand with police enforcement to shut the space for free expression. After an event featuring Francesca Albanese was relocated following threats, 100 riot officers stormed the venue it was moved to. Police also maintained a presence at the Free University of Berlin where the event was being unofficially livestreamed.

As protests erupted against the Christian Democratic Party’s (CDU/CSU) collaboration with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to pass a restrictive anti-immigrant agenda, and the AfD’s rise in popularity ahead of the February 2025 general election, some of them were also met with excessive force. Following the election, in which the CDU/CSU came out on top, chancellor-elect Friedrich Merz and his party launched a sweeping parliamentary inquiry into public funding for CSOs accused of lacking political neutrality, including those behind the protests against the far right.

Italy was added to the CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist in March 2025 as the government prepared to push through the controversial ‘anti-Gandhi bill’, described by rights watchdogs as the most serious attack on the right to protest in decades. Adopted in June 2025, the sweeping legal package significantly expanded police powers and introduced dozens of new criminal offences and harsher penalties under the pretext of public security, criminalising non-violent civil disobedience with severe prison sentences. In parallel, reports surfaced that critics of the government had been targeted with Graphite.

Switzerland has been downgraded from open to narrowed amid increasing restrictions on civil society activists, journalists and protests. Police met protests against police brutality and racism and in solidarity with Palestine with excessive force, including rubber bullets and teargas. Concerns have also been raised about surveillance of climate activists and social movements. In April 2024, during criminal proceedings to identify activists who had painted an illegal bike lane in Geneva, reports revealed that police had profiled over 100 XR members. Investigators traced activists’ incomes, family ties, donations and holidays, despite the group’s non-violent actions causing only minor property damage. Switzerland’s strict banking secrecy laws also limit press freedom. Police raided journalist Lukas Hässig’s home and office and seized his devices due to his reporting on the former CEO of Raiffeisen Bank and his adviser. The laws impose penalties of up to five years in prison for disclosing banking information, even when publication is clearly in the public interest.

Successive amendments to protest laws have imposed increasingly harsh restrictions. Offences such as blocking roads and wearing face coverings result in administrative detention, with repeat violations triggering criminal charges and imprisonment. At the same time, the government has intensified its targeting of critics under the guise of countering foreign interference. After adopting a foreign agents law in 2024, authorities introduced a further such law in 2025, a direct translation of the US Foreign Agents Registration Act, which extends to individuals and imposes criminal liability for non-compliance. The new law was adopted alongside other legislation aimed against government critics, including restrictions on foreign funding for media and new requirements for CSOs to secure government approval before accepting foreign grants.

The government has also moved to dismantle the political opposition. By June 2025, authorities had jailed or detained eight leaders of pro-European parties for refusing to testify before a parliamentary commission investigating alleged human rights abuses under the previous United National Movement (UNM) government. On 28 October 2025, the commission’s findings were used to petition the Constitutional Court to outlaw the UNM and other opposition parties the government deemed its satellites. Weeks earlier, a restrictive bill was proposed to penalise people linked to banned parties and prevent them standing in elections or holding public office.

Outspoken protest supporters also face reprisals, including dismissal, intimidation by security services and smears. These measures have spread across the education sector, where administrators and professors backed student strikes and refused to call police to disperse striking students. By September, civil society groups reported that over 100 school employees had been dismissed in retaliation for backing the protest movement.

In March 2025, government-organised counter-protesters set up encampments around key institutions in the capital. Investigative journalists have identified numerous individuals with links to organised crime among them. These camps, backed by municipal authorities and protected by police, have become flashpoints for violence, with frequent clashes between residents and anti-government protesters.

Top violations

The most common violations of civic freedoms documented In Europe and Central Asia in 2025 were the detention of protesters, along with the disruption of protests and the use of excessive force, followed by attacks on journalists and the public vilification of civil society and dissenting voices.

Protest rights crumbling in Europe: detentions, disruption and excessive force

The detention of protesters continued to be the most common violation in Europe and Central Asia, documented in at least 30 countries. Europe accounts for a disproportionate number of protest rights violations globally, painting a troubling picture of human rights backsliding.

Climate activists engaging in non-violent civil disobedience continued to face detention and intimidation, exemplified by the police’s forceful dispersion and detention of hundreds of XR activists in the Netherlands in January 2025. Detentions of environmental protesters were also recorded in Albania, Finland, Germany, Portugal and Serbia.

In Serbia, as authorities intensified their crackdown on student-led protests, police were accused of unlawfully deploying a sonic weapon at the largest demonstration to date on 15 March 2025, attended by around 300,000 people. During a silent vigil, the quiet was abruptly broken by a loud, disorienting noise, triggering panic and a stampede. Police initially denied possessing them but later admitted long-range acoustic devices had been deployed at the protest, while continuing to deny they activated them.

Journalists also faced violence from protesters. In Romania, during a protest in Bucharest against the Constitutional Court’s annulment of the 2024 presidential election, far-right protesters vandalised the car of the Antena3-CNN reporting team, attempting to deflate the tyres and ripping off its licence plates, and verbally and physically harassed several journalists.

Beyond protests, journalists have often been attacked to intimidate them or obstruct their work, including by bystanders, private security services and politicians. In October 2025, a bomb exploded outside the home of Italian investigative journalist Sigfrido Ranucci, destroying his car and damaging nearby property.

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth year, Ukrainian and international journalists remain targets of Russian forces. In October 2025, a Russian drone killed Ukrainian journalists Olena Hramova and Yevhen Karmazin as they documented the aftermath of an attack in Kramatorsk.

Public vilification as a tool of repression

Efforts to publicly vilify and disparage CSOs, HRDs and the media were recorded in at least 19 European and Central Asian countries, often followed by other actions to further restrict civic space and suppress dissent.

The Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID and overhaul of US foreign assistance provided an additional pretext for like-minded governments in Europe and Central Asia to threaten and intimidate civil society. In several countries, US officials’ rhetoric smearing USAID as a ‘criminal organisation’ was invoked to justify the launch of investigations on spurious grounds. In Georgia, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze echoed those talking points to accuse civil society and the opposition of attempting to stage a revolution at the behest of the previous US administration. Days later, prosecutors opened an investigation into alleged sabotage and ‘assistance to foreign-controlled organisations’.

This rhetoric also fuelled fresh attempts to introduce restrictive legislation. In Kazakhstan, officials including the president and members of parliament renewed attacks on CSOs, accusing them of using foreign funding to promote ‘alien values’. In February 2025, a politician from a pro-government party called for a foreign agents law, citing the Trump administration’s actions as justification to ‘rewrite the rules of the game’. The government initiated new CSO legislation, reinforcing fears new restrictions may follow.

In February 2025, Milorad Dodik, President of Republika Srpska (RS), Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Serb-majority entity, lashed out at the media following his conviction in a criminal case. Accusing media groups of taking funds from USAID to ‘destroy Republika Srpska’, he threatened they would be ‘put on trial by the people’. Days later, the RS parliament fast-tracked a foreign agents law to automatically designate any organisation receiving international funding as an ‘agent of foreign influence’ and bar them from influencing public opinion or proposing legislation, effectively criminalising public interest advocacy from civil society groups. In May 2025, the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina struck down the law, arguing it violated international human rights standards and imposed undue restrictions on CSO activities.

The silencing of critical voices deepens in Central Asia

In Central Asia, the main violations recorded in 2025 included the detention and prosecution of HRDs and journalists in retaliation for their work, new restrictive laws and persistent legal harassment.

In addition to criminal prosecutions, states subject HRDs to other forms of harassment. In Turkmenistan in November 2024, journalist Soltan Achilova was forcibly hospitalised, preventing her travelling to Geneva for a human rights award ceremony for the second time.

Repression increasingly extends beyond borders with states cooperating to stamp out dissent. In Uzbekistan in April 2025, Karakalpak activist Rinat Utambetov was sentenced to two years and six months in prison for ‘encroaching on the constitutional order’ and ‘disseminating materials threatening public security’ after being extradited from Kazakhstan in December 2024. He was accused of sharing video appeals by public figures related to mass protests in Uzbekistan’s Karakalpakstan region in 2022, which were brutally repressed. In April and May 2025, bloggers Umida Bekchanova, Abdulla Orusov and Alisher Sakhatov were detained in Turkey for allegedly threatening public security and faced deportation orders to Turkmenistan, despite a real risk of imprisonment and torture on return. Orusov and Sakhatov later disappeared while their deportation orders were under review, heightening concerns for their safety.

Countries of concern: unrelenting crackdown on Palestine solidarity in Europe

As global solidarity with Palestinian people persisted amid Israel’s ongoing genocide, Europe has continued to be a focal point for mobilisation and repression. In 2025, over 60 per cent of violations recorded by the CIVICUS Monitor against Palestine solidarity actions occurred in Europe. Civic space restrictions on solidarity with Palestine have been recorded in at least 17 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.

Authorities across the region have used excessive force against protesters and sought to criminalise Palestine solidarity activism, often by misusing anti-extremism and counter-terrorism laws. In July 2025, the UK parliament proscribed Palestine Action under anti-terror legislation, making expressions of support, membership and publicly wearing items associated with the group offences punishable by up to 14 years in prison. The decision followed the group’s civil disobedience action at an airforce base, where it spray-painted two aircraft red. As people mobilised against the proscription, police carried out unprecedented arrests, targeting hundreds of entirely peaceful protesters for holding signs reading ‘I support Palestine Action’.

In June 2025, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency designated the CSO Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East (Jüdische Stimme) as extremist, along with another group, Palestine Speaks, and groups that are part of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement in Berlin and Bonn. In 2024, a partly state-owned bank froze Jüdische Stimme’s accounts and demanded detailed financial and personal information on all members, under threat of closure.

In Belgium, police arrested Palestinian activist Mohammed Khatib in April 2025 after he attended a daily protest, with officers citing a ‘threat number’ assigned by a state security agency. He was questioned without legal representation and released the next morning. His refugee status was later revoked after authorities labelled him a ‘hate preacher’. In Slovenia, Palestinian-Slovenian citizen Jaber Elmasry reported sustained harassment by intelligence agents lasting over a year, including attempts to obtain information about Slovenia’s Palestinian community and local solidarity activists.