Reimagining the EU Dream: Feminists Perspectives on EU’s Normative Power in Difficult Times

Amid the growing strength, resources and political influence of anti-gender mobilizations, the securitization of politics, and overlapping economic, political, ecological crises, the EU’s normative role in gender equality and human rights is under increasing strain and scrutiny. While the EU has successfully established minimum standards for its member states and guided their domestic frameworks in areas of shared competence, as well as influenced candidate states through the conditionality mechanism, this normative role has significantly weakened in countries such as Hungary and Turkey, where anti-gender governments increasingly contest the EU as a normative anchor. In Turkey, conditionality has offered critical opportunities for gender equality advocates in the late 1990s and early 2000s, contributing to significant progress, however the ongoing process of de-Europeanization has had detrimental effects on gender equality. Today, accession conditionality has lost effectiveness, while political bargaining over migration and defense has diluted human rights commitments. Drawing on data collected as part of the EU EXPRESS2 project – through interviews with civil society representatives, legal advocates and academic/activists, a co-creation workshop and a survey – this paper examines perspectives on the EU’s role as a normative actor from within an increasingly authoritarian context marked by declining rule of law and shrinking civic space. The paper shows that despite de-Europeanization, feminist actors continue to view transnational and supranational networks as critical spaces for accountability, advocacy, and documentation of feminist concerns. However, they are critical of the incoherence in the EU’s normative and political agendas, particularly where political bargaining undermines gender, democracy, and human rights commitments. The perception of EU as a normative ally varies across generations and political outlooks, as feminist actors increasingly look beyond the global North to build transnational and intersectional coalitions grounded in principles of social justice. The paper thus also offers insights into the limits and possibilities of the EU’s gender equality agenda in the context of enlargement and external action, drawing lessons from Turkey.