Post by Schams El Ghoneimi

Today Euractiv’s Editor-in-Chief stepped down after spending over a year degrading Europe’s Muslim community, from calling Irish people antisemites to spreading fake news on Israel’s war in Gaza: this is good news for Euractiv But it is not victory. The dutch Medienhuis shareholders did not stop him when, last February 2025, he started publishing racist editorials. Playing our muslim and jewish communities against one another was okay, at a time of unprecedented tensions. Worse, a letter co-signed by over 30 of his own staff to deplore his assertions was not enough to act against this populistic drift towards ideas only the far-right entertains. It reminded me how vulnerable Europe’s Muslim community was : an editor-in-chief could spread hatred towards this broad and diverse community with no repercussions for your job, the investors probably hoped it could act as a click-bait to get “new readers looking for uncensored (racist) ideas”, banking on Trump’s return to power a few months before the editorial appointment. Few EU professionals, politicians and journalists come from Europe’s Muslim community, which is heavily underrepresented. I was, in my own experience, the only political group adviser working on the Arab world in the European Parliament… who spoke Arabic. So what was the definitive reason? Did Euractiv’s shareholders actually realize that, after all, Trump was badly losing midterms elections, Orban was out and EU readers wanted more than Trumpism and pro-Israeli army propaganda ? I am a staunch European and I am baffled to see it took 16 months for Matthew Karnitschnig to no longer be editor-in-chief of what used to be one of my favourite newspapers. Europe deserves better. Below: link to my original right-of-reply from Feb 2025 to Euractiv.