‘Anti-White’ Discrimination in EU-Funded Spaces Sparks Debate in Berlin

A café-coworking space in Berlin has sparked a new controversy over discrimination, public money, and identity in a Europe that is becoming increasingly endophobic.

BIWOC Rising, an organisation based in the Kreuzberg district, runs a space described as a “safer space” reserved for “Black, Indigenous and Women of Colour” and for trans, inter and non-binary people “of colour.”

In practice, whites and heterosexuals are excluded.

The key issue is not just exclusion, but funding. According to documents cited in Germany, the entity received €662,450 between 2021 and 2024 from the federal programme Demokratie leben!, promoted by the German Ministry for Family Affairs to “combat extremism, promote tolerance and strengthen democracy.”

In other words, public money supposedly intended for democratic cohesion ends up funding a space that discriminates based on race and sexual orientation.

The case has drawn public attention because it touches on a central contradiction in Europe’s new institutional anti-racism. For years, national governments, municipalities and EU programmes have funded projects focused on diversity, inclusion, and the fight against discrimination. The official framework is always the same: protect vulnerable minorities, combat prejudice, promote equality. But in some cases, that logic has shifted towards segregated spaces under a different vocabulary: “non-mixed,” “racialised,” “safe,” “decolonial.” Are native Europeans the new discriminated minority?

The problem is not that associations exist to support specific groups—Europe has funded programmes for decades for abused women, refugees, Roma communities or victims of persecution; the difference lies in the criterion of exclusion. A shelter for victims is not the same as a café that bars white people from entry for being white.

That is the red line.

In Germany, the controversy also comes at a time when the Demokratie leben! programme is under review. Minister Karin Prien has announced stricter evaluation of subsidies and argued that those receiving public funds must remain within the constitutional democratic order. The statement seems obvious. What is striking is that it needs to be clarified in a European country that prides itself on being a constitutional democracy.

The BIWOC Rising case is not unique. In France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sweden, “non-mixed” events for “racialised people,” university workshops closed to whites, and cultural initiatives separating participants by origin, skin colour, or sexual orientation have multiplied in recent years.

They are not always permanent, nor always directly funded, but they follow the same political logic: presenting racial segregation as a form of reparation.

This framing is key to understanding where the approach comes from. Europe spent decades denouncing segregation as a moral and legal anomaly. Now, part of its subsidised ecosystem is reintroducing it with therapeutic language. It is no longer about excluding, but about “protecting.” No longer about race, but about “racialised experience.” No longer about administrative privilege, but about “social justice.”

The underlying issue is institutional. National programmes like Demokratie leben! or EU-level schemes such as CERV, with around €1.5 billion for 2021–2027, fund civil society networks focused on rights, equality, values, and democracy. On paper, the objective is broad and to some extent vague. In practice, the ideological filter is becoming increasingly decisive: organisations aligned with the language of diversity gain privileged access to funding, visibility, and public legitimacy.

The outcome is the same in all cases: the European taxpayer finances structures that may exclude them from their own spaces because of their skin colour.

This is not about exaggerating the phenomenon (there is no massive network of ‘whites-not-allowed’ cafés across Europe), but the Berlin case matters precisely because it shows how far an institutional logic can go when left unchecked. What is exceptional becomes precedent. Precedent becomes a model. And the model, with sufficient funding, becomes public policy.

This is exactly the model that has been used to reshape the Europe of decades past into the Europe of ‘European values’ proclaimed by Brussels.

Europe has a problem if the fight against discrimination ends up accepting selective discrimination. Germany has it, where the case has already forced the government to review subsidies. And Brussels has it, if it continues funding identity without demanding universality.

Normalising or financing anti-white racism only feeds a situation that will, sooner or later, generate new social conflicts in an already strained continent.