Brussels, 1 August 2026 | Eduxo.eu, European Network for Democracy and Equality ASBL, expresses its profound solidarity with the victims, survivors, and the entire LGBTIQA+ community in Berlin following the attack at the Pride on 25 July 2026, in which one person was killed and dozens injured, several critically.
Eduxo condemns this attack in the strongest terms. This was not an isolated tragedy, but an act of violence directed at queer visibility itself, at the simple and fundamental right of LGBTIQA+ people to gather, celebrate, and be seen in public space. Pride exists because that right has never been guaranteed. Pride has been protest as much as celebration, a claim to public space made by a community repeatedly told it did not belong there. What happened in Berlin is a violent reminder of why that claim still matters and that touched part of our community and Eduxo representative who gather in Berlin to celebrate a day of joy.
Eduxo condemns all extremism of any origin that targets people for who they are or who they love. Authorities have described the attack as an act of Islamist terrorism. It is clear not representative of any faith or community. Muslim, migrant, and refugee communities are not responsible for this attack, and any attempt to hold them collectively accountable is both false and dangerous.
We are, in fact, acutely aware that such attempts are already underway. Far-right actors across Europe have moved quickly to instrumentalise this tragedy, using LGBTIQA+ victims as a pretext to advance anti-migrant and anti-Muslim narratives, while these same political forces spend the rest of the year attacking LGBTIQA+ rights, trans rights, women’s rights, and the rights of migrants and refugees. Eduxo rejects this cynical exploitation without reservation. Solidarity with LGBTIQA+ people cannot be selectively invoked to serve an agenda that, in every other context, seeks to erase us.
Real solidarity looks like action, not opportunism. Eduxo calls on European and national institutions to:
- Strengthen and consistently enforce protection against hate crimes targeting LGBTIQA+ people, including through the long-delayed extension of EU hate crime and hate speech legislation to cover sexual orientation and gender identity;
- Invest in LGBTIQA+ organisations, community spaces, and safe public infrastructure for Pride and other gatherings, rather than leaving their protection to be negotiated event by event;
- Fund and scale up education and prevention programmes that build resilience against all forms of extremism, without stigmatising entire communities in the process;
- Ensure meaningful institutional accountability, including transparent review of the security failures that allowed this attack to happen, and sustained, rather than symbolic, engagement with LGBTIQA+ organisations after the news cycle moves on.
Pride will continue. It will continue because it must, and because the alternative, silence and retreat from public life, is precisely what an attack like this is designed to produce. Eduxo will keep showing up, for memory, for dignity, for safety, and for solidarity.