The Brussels NGO scandal continues to expand

By
Pieter Cleppe
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Former European Commissioner for Climate Action Frans Timmermans (Copyright: By European Parliament from EU - Hearing of Frans Timmermans (the Netherlands) - Executive Vice President-Designate - European Green Deal, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82941554 )

The Brussels NGO scandal continues to expand. Now, the European Taxpayers’ Association (TAE) have filed an official complaint against former EU commissioners Frans Timmermans and Virginijus Sinkevičius, accusing both of non-transparent and possibly unlawful allocation of EU funds to NGOs between 2019 and 2024, alleging that 7 billion euro was allocated without sufficient control and that the funds were used both to influence the European Parliament and to litigate against private corporations. The complaints have been made with the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in Luxembourg.

According to new revelations digged up by MEPs, the total amount spent by the European Commission between 2019 and 2023 on subsidies for a total of 37,000 European NGOs and lobby groups would even amount to a gigantic €17 billion. The Patriots Group in the EP have thereby also published a subsidy register, highlighting the organisations that were supported by the European Commission from 2019 to 2023. Friend and foe will need to admit an investigation is urgently needed.

In June, the European Parliament already voted to set up a special working group to investigate and monitor the financing of NGOs. Earlier, the European Commission has admitted that “unauthorised lobbying activities” had taken place that were financed with European money, in particular from the so-called LIFE programme. This happened during the previous term of the European Commission, when Dutch socialist Frans Timmermans acted as its vice-president and a major driving force behind the EU’s “green deal”.

The new working group will be given special staff and will examine thousands of pages of contracts between NGOs and the European Commission. The initiative came at the insistence of the European People’s Party (EPP), which includes Dutch MEP Sander Smit, who represents Dutch famers party BBB. He rightly states:

“The truth must come out! It is not up to the Commission, which already has the right of legislative initiative, to then deliberately influence MEPs through a shadow lobby of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that are financed and instrumentalised by the European Commission itself. (…) The rule of law applies not only to EU countries, but also to the EU institutions themselves.”

The fact that it is not normal for a government institution to pump fortunes of taxpayers” money into all kinds of NGOs – or even into media – is anything but obvious in Brussels. Most think tanks focusing on European policy – from Bruegel to CEPS – are funded to a greater or lesser extent by the institutions they reflect on. This is either direct, through subsidies and tenders from the European Commission, the European Parliament or the EU budget’s research fund “Horizon Europe”, or indirect, through EU-supported programmes, partnerships or platforms. In most cases, this is not an occasional source of income but structural, large-scale funding. The fact that this undermines the credibility of the receivers is something that many in Brussels do not even understand. 

Secretive lobby contracts

Over the last few months, more and more details have emerged about how the European Commission financially supports an entire ecosystem of pressure groups, apparently also actively directing their lobbying activities. The German newspaper Die Welt, for example, revealed that “non-governmental organisations (NGOs) had to lobby in exchange for funding under the contracts and, for example, fight against coal-fired power stations, pesticides and the free trade agreement between Europe and South America (Mercosur).” This was at a time when the European Commission was trying to finally finalise that trade agreement with Latin American trading bloc Mercosur.

In response, the European Commission is anything but transparent, and it even seems to deliberately attempt to sow confusion. The institution initially refused to talk to the newspaper about the article. However, after it was published in mid-June and, unsurprisingly, attracted a lot of attention, the eurocrats felt compelled to respond. A few hours after publication, the Commission stated: “There are no secret contracts with NGOs,” adding that the money goes to organisations “on the basis of financing agreements supplemented by work programmes”.

Die Welt clarifies: “The terms may be different, but “financing agreements” and their annexes – in this case the “work programmes” that Die Welt has seen – are contracts: legally binding documents signed by two parties. The Commission promises public money and the NGOs indicate how they want to spend it, including on lobbying. Both parts of the agreement are therefore set out in writing: how much money is provided and what is given in return.”

In other words, the European Commission is deliberately obfuscating what is going on. 

Furthermore, the sums of money going to NGOs are indeed listed in the EU’s financial transparency register, which anyone can consult online, but the content of the contracts remains hidden from the public. Again, according to Die Welt, “citizens were never told that the environmental organisations were supposed to discredit pesticides and stop Mercosur.”

The newspaper was only able to gain access because “employees of an EU institution showed the documents on a computer, even though they were not allowed to do so. If their identities were revealed, they could face legal consequences.” Taking photos of the contracts is not permitted, even though the Commission claims that they are not secret. So why not publish these contracts? According to the German journalists, “the pages cannot be printed or searched for terms. And every 30 minutes they disappear and have to be reloaded. (…) The documents are overwritten with a watermark that shows who opened the document based on the IP address of the computer used to read it.”

Questionable practices

Should we consider this to be normal? In the European Parliament, the centre-left Socialists & Democrats, the fake “liberals” of Renew Europe, the Greens and the far left all voted against the establishment of the working group. This raises questions about their views on democratic control.

Incidentally, the European Commission and the NGOs serving as the private lobby machine of eurocrats did not just try to influence the European Parliament – something that Dutch MEP Esther de Lange already complained about in 2023. They also tried to secretly influence German politics. In 2020, the German Parliament voted in favour of a gradual phase-out of coal by 2038. However, according to EU officials, this did not go far enough. Die Welt quotes the following from a secret agreement they concluded with the NGO “Client Earth”:

“The 2038 end date for coal is incompatible with the 1.5-degree target of the Paris Agreement and is therefore too late. (…) In the coming year, we will continue our work to combat coal in Germany in order to accelerate the country’s phase-out of coal.”

One can only describe such practices as deeply problematic, especially as these are not new.

Back in 2017, European CDU MEP Markus Pieper called on the European Commission to stop supporting NGOs that act contrary to the EU’s “strategic trade and security objectives”. It seems obvious that a administrative body like the European Commission should not engage in lobbying, whether it is for or against its own policy.

Growing criticism

The European Court of Auditors published a critical report on the problem in April. It revealed that between 2021 and 2023, the EU spent not less than €7 billion from various funds on 90 NGOs focusing on environmental policy, migration policy or science. A notable revelation in this regard is that, according to the European Court of Auditors, “a large proportion of EU funding allocated to NGOs under direct management went to a small number of NGOs. Of the more than 4,400 NGOs, 30 NGOs received more than 40% of the total funds in the period 2014-2023 (i.e. 3.3 billion euros).

The auditors warned that the figures in their report “should be interpreted with caution, as there is no reliable overview of EU funds paid to NGOs”, and regretted that “This information is published on multiple systems, websites and databases, resulting in a fragmented approach, which hampers transparency and limits insights into the role of NGOs in EU policy-making and programme implementation. Moreover, without this information, it is more difficult to assess whether EU funds are overly concentrated on a small number of NGOs and whether such concentration aligns with EU policy objectives”.

Fortunately, change finally seems to be on the horizon. Last year, the European Commission informed green NGOs that they would no longer be allowed to use EU funding to lobby EU institutions. In May, the European Commission then announced that it would deny funding for lobbying or advocacy work to NGOs focusing specifically on health policy because of the “reputational risk” to the European Union.

Recently, the European Commission also sent letters to two NGOs, the European Network on Smoking Prevention (ENSP) and the Smoke Free Partnership (SFP), instructing them to stop lobbying. Both NGOs receive substantial funding from the European Commission and the former was said to be closely involved in legislation, in addition to its lobbying activities. NGO SPF would thereby have received €95,000 from the EU for a project to organise conferences on “health-promoting taxes on alcohol, tobacco and unhealthy foods and beverages, and to learn how to advocate for these measures.”

The case serves as a good example of how completely out of touch the European Commission is. Both NGOs are keen to crack down on all alternatives to tobacco, even though EU Member States such as Sweden, which has an exemption from the EU ban on snus, have proven that such paternalistic policies undermine the objective of a “smoke free” society. Today, Sweden has among the lowest smoking rates in Europe, as well as a much lower incidence of smoking-related diseases. In comparison to other EU countries, Sweden has 44% fewer tobacco related deaths, 41% lower lung cancer rates and 38% fewer cancer deaths.

The competent European Commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, is however very much on the same line as the paternalistic NGOs. He is pushing hard for higher taxes on tobacco and is thereby also targeting alternatives, most certainly vaping, completely ignoring Sweden’s successful approach. During a hearing at the European Parliament, the European Commissioner stated: “Smoking kills, vaping kills,” thereby equating the two, even though according to the UK government’s health department, “best estimates show e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful to your health than normal cigarettes.” It appears to be common practice for the European Commission to use taxpayers” money to hire an army of NGOs to lobby for all kinds of policy choices that are often more inspired by gut feelings than by evidence.  

Waning support for NGOs

According to reports, some EU member states with left-wing cabinet ministers are trying to obstruct attempts to end subsidies for NGOs that engage in lobbying. In particular, the health ministers of Spain, Slovenia and Belgium are said to have spoken out explicitly at a meeting of the Council in favour of EU funding of NGOs. The Belgian socialist Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke went the furthest. He reportedly claimed that these organisations act as a “necessary counterweight to what he sees as a growing group of industry-funded lobbies”. In other words, it would be the government’s job to distribute money to proponents of policy positions that, according to that same government, are underrepresented in the debate.

It may be telling that one subsidized NGO, the “European Public Health Alliance” (EPHA), is now considering investigating “support from the Belgian government” as an alternative to the loss of EU subsidies. People like Vandenbroucke will probably be happy to hand out other people’s money, but it is questionable whether the cash-strapped Belgian state can afford to do so. Can one be forgiven for finding this all outrageous?

Fundamentally, it is of course difficult for an NGO not to engage in lobbying. Interest groups organise conferences, undertake studies and publish opinion pieces. There is nothing wrong with that. On the contrary, whether these groups are left-wing or not, this can be a valuable contribution to the social debate.

However, when policymakers finance these kinds of activities to a large extent, these civil society groups are no longer a reflection of what is going on in society but turn instead into an extension of the state apparatus.

It should therefore not surprise that also because of this, the public is losing trust in NGOs. In 1999, Edelman’s Trust Barometer showed that NGOs were the most trusted institutions worldwide. Twenty years later, companies enjoy more trust than NGOs. What goes around comes around.

 

 

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