EU Parliament Refuses To Debate and Condemn Henry Nowak’s Murder
The ECR’s proposal was only supported by the Patriots and ESN, while every other group rejected it despite rushing to adopt a resolution on George Floyd six years ago.
Protesters hold images of Henry Nowak and his blood-stained handcuffs outside of the Southampton police station on June 2, 2026.
JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP
The ECR’s proposal was only supported by the Patriots and ESN, while every other group rejected it despite rushing to adopt a resolution on George Floyd six years ago.
Yet again, the European Parliament spat in the face of millions of Europeans it is supposed to represent, in a remarkably symbolic fashion.
On Wednesday evening, the Conference of Presidents (leaders of the eight parliamentary groups, as well as EP President Roberta Metsola) blocked a proposal from the conservative ECR group to hold a plenary debate and then adopt a parliamentary resolution on the tragic and outrageous death of Henry Nowak.
Nowak was the 18-year-old British student who bled out on the street in Southampton while being arrested and handcuffed for an alleged racist hate crime after he was stabbed by a Sikh man.
With the proposal for a memorial debate on the story that shocked the entire West now before Parliament, the EU Parliament faced a choice strikingly similar to the one it confronted in 2020, when the death of George Floyd in the United States ignited Black Lives Matter protests across Western Europe as well. This time, however, many of the same people made a very different choice.
While the mainstream elite (including Commission President von der Leyen) was eager to debate the alleged murder of the career criminal in Minneapolis and rushed to condemn “all forms of racism” in the form of a resolution back then, it actively refused the same for a young European who died because the UK police decided he must have been the perpetrator just for being white.
Out of the eight parliamentary groups, only the sovereigntist Patriots and ESN supported the ECR proposal, while leaders of the EPP, S&D, Renew, Greens, and Left, as well as President Metsola herself, all rejected it.
“The EPP has once again joined the far left to protect woke policing by blocking ECR’s proposal,” wrote Swedish lawmaker Charlie Weimers in response. The Patriots (PfE) group also left a message for the members of the Ursula coalition: “European lives matter, too.”
A similar scenario unfolded in the Polish parliament recently, where right-wing MPs paid a silent tribute to Nowak’s memory. Members of the ruling coalition, led by PM Donald Tusk’s centrist Civic Platform, a member of EPP, did not even bother to stand up. Neither did the PM himself.
Tamás Orbán is a political journalist for europeanconservative.com, based in Brussels. Born in Transylvania, he studied history and international relations in Kolozsvár, and worked for several political research institutes in Budapest. His interests include current affairs, social movements, geopolitics, and Central European security. On Twitter, he is @TamasOrbanEC.
