Hong Kong: The EU Hong Kong report published on 22 September 2026 reads less like an annual review than a chronicle of a political system being closed down chapter by chapter. Adopted by the European Commission and High Representative Kaja Kallas, the 28th report to the European Parliament and the Council covers developments in 2025, the fifth year after Beijing imposed the National Security Law, and concludes that the erosion of the territory’s autonomy and fundamental freedoms continued without interruption.
The documentary record is stark. In December 2025 a court convicted media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai on national security and sedition charges; Lai, a British citizen, has been held continuously since 31 December 2020, mostly in solitary confinement. Activist Joshua Wong, already serving a sentence for subversion, was newly charged with conspiring to collude with foreign forces. In a precedent that alarmed diplomats, Kwok Yin-sang, the father of exiled activist Anna Kwok, was prosecuted for attempting to deal with his daughter’s financial assets, the first time a relative of a wanted activist faced a national security charge.
What gives this year’s EU Hong Kong report its sharpest European dimension is the law’s reach beyond the territory. Hong Kong authorities issued arrest warrants with bounties against a further 15 overseas activists in 2025, including a European citizen living in Germany. This moves the question from one of monitoring a distant jurisdiction to one of protecting people on EU soil, and it raises uncomfortable questions for member states about extradition arrangements, transnational repression and the security of diaspora communities.
The report also documents the end of organised opposition. Ahead of the Legislative Council elections in December 2025, the remaining pro-democracy parties disbanded, among them the Democratic Party, once the largest force in the legislature. The Legislative Council also rejected a bill to create a framework for same-sex partnerships, despite an order from the Court of Final Appeal in September 2023 requiring one. The episode illustrates a pattern the EU has noted for several years, in which the judiciary retains pockets of independence while the political branches narrow the space in which rulings can take effect.
Macao, examined in a parallel report, is following the same trajectory at a smaller scale. The territory saw its first arrest in the name of national security, the disqualification of candidates from legislative elections and the forced closure of the independent outlet All About Macau, even though its basic freedoms are meant to be guaranteed until 2049.
The Hong Kong government rejected the findings as unfounded and biased, and China’s foreign ministry office in the city condemned the report. That reaction is ritual by now, but it matters because the EU’s leverage is limited. The Union has relied since 2020 on a package of measures that restricted exports of sensitive equipment and eased visas and scholarships for Hong Kong residents, rather than on sanctions against officials, and member states have never agreed on anything tougher.
The economic data in the same EU Hong Kong report explains why. Hong Kong remained the world’s third-largest financial centre in 2025, about 1,770 EU companies operated there, and the EU ran a goods surplus of €18.9 billion on trade worth €27.7 billion, plus a services surplus of €18.7 billion. European business is deeply embedded, and many capitals see Hong Kong as a gateway to mainland China rather than a separate political question.
The tension between those numbers and the report’s findings is the central dilemma for EU China policy on Hong Kong. The annual exercise, promised to the European Parliament at the 1997 handover, preserves a factual record and signals that Brussels has not accepted the new normal. Whether it can do more than record depends on member states deciding that protecting their own citizens and residents from extraterritorial prosecution is a line worth defending, even at some commercial cost.
