A conversation with EU parliamentarian Chloe Ridel.

Six months ago, the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights charged Chloe Ridel, a French Member of the European Parliament, with preparing a report focusing on how the EU can address a dramatic rise in transnational repression.

That Draft Report on Addressing Transnational Repression of Human Rights Defenders is now being considered by the EU Parliament, which must decide how to overhaul a system that is failing to protect EU citizens from countries as far afield as Iran and China.

Ridel spoke with The Diplomat’s Luke Hunt about the links between transnational repression,  international crime syndicates, and autocratic governments in Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, and what the EU needs to do to fight the scourge.

She says the EU has fallen behind nations like Australia and Canada in tackling transnational repression. It even lacks its own data base and relies on Freedom House to document repression that has included killings, abductions, torture, and the jailing of opposition politicians, rights activists, and journalists.

In February, Freedom House released that found a quarter of the world’s governments were using tactics of transnational repression. China topped the list of “physical and direct incidents” with 22 percent of recorded cases between 2014 and 2024.

Among the major problems are Interpol, which Ridel says is not fit for the purpose, given that red notices issued by authoritarian regimes are then used by Interpol agents to detain and return political dissidents to their countries of origin, and too often to a tragic fate.

Ridel became a Member of the EU Parliament for France’s Socialist Party in 2024. She has been spokesperson for the party since March 2023 and sits on the EU parliament’s subcommittee for human rights.

Prior to this, she was a French civil servant and a member of the Jean-Jaures Foundation in Paris. In 2020, she co-founded a think tank, the Rousseau Institute.