The Vision Network comprises organizations that have influenced policies worldwide, including drafting anti-abortion agendas in the U.S., collaborating with Russian officials to undermine women’s rights at the UN, and advocating for severe penalties against LGBTQ+ individuals in certain African countries. Members of Vision Network include activists who nearly succeeded in passing a total abortion ban in Poland, as well as individuals who have published manifestos advocating for the future denial of human rights to the LGBTQ+ community, the criminalization of abortion, and restrictions on divorce and access to contraception.
Željka Markić, from the Croatian association In the Name of the Family, is one of the network’s four global coordinators and has been a key strategist for the past eight years. In 2017, she hosted the network’s first meeting in Croatia, then known as Agenda Europe. Due to increased public scrutiny, the group rebranded as the Vision Network in 2019 but maintained its core objectives and membership.
Sophia Kuby, Director of Strategic Relations and Training at ADF International, is the second coordinator of Vision Network. ADF International, the global arm of the U.S.-based Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), has significantly expanded its influence in Europe. Since 2014, it has spent millions of dollars in Europe, making it the second-largest U.S. Christian Right spender in Europe.
According to the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF), “ADF International has brought its U.S. experience to redefine religious freedom and insert its anti-LGBTQ, anti-choice agenda into every element of government and society.” The organization has co-sponsored Agenda Europe’s summits, engaged in national and European strategic litigation, and collaborated with media outlets such as EurActiv. Kuby has played a crucial role in expanding ADF International’s influence. The organization has five offices across Europe, in London, Brussels, Strasbourg, Geneva, and Vienna, employing at least 15 lawyers to advance its agenda.
In 2018, the Council of Europe rejected ADF International’s application for Participatory Status, stating that it does not “respect and defend the values and principles of the Council of Europe.”
When the network was called Agenda Europe, Croatia had eight members. In addition to Markić and another person from the association In the Name of the Family, the network included the leader of the 40 Days for Life initiative, the then-heads of the Croatian branches of the World Youth Alliance and the petition platform CitizenGO, as well as politicians Ladislav Ilčić, Stjepo Bartulica, and Marijana Petir.
During the summit, the feminist collective fAKTIV organized protests at Zagreb’s Cvjetni Trg and European Square under the slogan “Not in our city, we know your agenda.”. On the second day of the Vision Network summit, several activists entered Hotel Dubrovnik. They disrupted the start of the conference by whistling and chanting. The organizers attempted to take away their banners forcibly and pushed the protesters away. Protesters claimed that Vision Network was behind a referendum to ban same-sex marriage in Croatia in 2013, campaigns against the Istanbul Convention, the Council of Europe Convention’s on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women, and the phenomenon of the ‘kneelers,’ an ultraconservative campaign imported from Poland where Catholic men kneel in squares across Croatia every month. With rosaries in hand, they pray against hard-won women’s rights and for the subjugation of women to men.
