Róisín Michaux
Irish journalist reporting on European gender medicine
Based in Brussels at the heart of the European project, Róisín Michaux brings a uniquely continental vantage point to the debate over gender medicalisation of minors. As an Irish journalist navigating open European borders, she has gone undercover in a Belgian youth clinic and traced cross-border surgical referrals reaching Madrid — making her reporting essential reading for clinicians, policymakers and parents across the EU.
Róisín Michaux is an Irish investigative journalist based in Brussels, where proximity to EU institutions and freedom of movement across Schengen borders gives her reporting on gender medicine a distinctively European dimension. Unlike most commentators on the international gender medicine debate, Michaux is positioned to follow the story not just across national headlines but across the literal borders that allow minors and their families to seek treatments in one member state that may be restricted or unavailable in another.
Her undercover work at a Belgian youth gender clinic — described in detail during the episode Inside Europe's Transgender Medicine System with Róisín Michaux (Beyond Gender, August 2026) — offers a rare first-hand account of how such services operate on the ground in continental Europe. Where much English-language coverage of youth gender medicine focuses on the United Kingdom or the United States, Michaux's reporting redirects attention to countries like Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland, all of which have been revising their approaches to paediatric gender care as evidence from long-term follow-up studies accumulates.
Perhaps the most striking element of her investigative work is the discovery of surgical procedures being performed on minors in Madrid — a finding that illustrates how open European borders can function as a pressure valve for families seeking interventions barred or slowed by their home country's medical guidelines. This cross-border dimension is of direct concern to EU institutions and national health ministries alike, and Michaux brings it into focus with on-the-ground reporting rather than policy abstraction.
As a journalist covering these issues from the centre of European governance, Michaux represents a voice that continental audiences — from Scandinavian clinicians navigating updated care guidelines to French and German parents weighing their options — will find both grounded and urgently relevant.
