The EU’s NGO Lobby Machine Under Scrutiny

By
Pieter Cleppe
-

On 13 May, a right-wing majority in the European Parliament decided to extend by another six months a scrutiny committee investigating NGOs that receive EU funds. The committee was set up in the wake of the revelations that the European Commission would have paid NGOs for years to lobby on behalf of initiatives such as the “Green Deal”. The amount cited is at least 7 billion euros.

The European Commission’s sole role is to propose legislation. Using taxpayers’ money to lobby in order to push that legislation through is, of course, unacceptable. In June 2025, the European Parliament voted to establish the special working group to investigate and monitor the funding of NGOs. The European Commission had already been forced to admit that it had engaged in “unauthorised lobbying activities” financed by EU funds, particularly from the so-called LIFE programme. All this took place during the European Commission’s previous term of office, with the Dutch European Commissioner Frans Timmermans serving as Vice-President and a key driving force behind the “Green Deal”, a package of expensive green regulations that burdens European industry and consumers.

German newspaper Die Welt has revealed that “non-governmental organisations were contractually obliged, in exchange for funding, to lobby and, for example, campaign against coal-fired power stations, pesticides and the free trade agreement between Europe and South America (Mercosur).” This was whilst the European Commission was, in the meantime, trying to finally finalise that trade agreement with the Latin American trade bloc Mercosur. As is often the case, one arm of the bureaucracy does not know what the other is doing.

Earlier this year, Dutch MEP Dirk Gotink (NSC) pointed out that the European Commission even funds NGOs that bring legal proceedings against EU member states. This would mean that, as a de facto extension of the European Commission, they are undermining national democracies. This is despite the fact that, in theory, the European Commission is supposed to serve the Member States, as a modest civil service focused on applying the European Treaties.

Ultimately, the problem here lies not so much with the NGOs themselves, but with the European Commission, which appears to be completely out of touch. In April, Charles Michel, former Belgian Prime Minister and former President of the European Council, also levelled strong criticism at European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen over this issue. He accused her of pursuing “an extremely authoritarian policy”. With the help of an army of NGOs, that is.

Change on the horizon?

Fortunately, it seems change is finally on the way. As early as 2024, the European Commission informed green NGOs that they would no longer be allowed to use EU funding to lobby EU institutions. It recently emerged that in 2025 the European Commission also reduced financial support to organisations in cases where this became “politically more difficult to justify the funding”, according to one of the affected organisations, EPC. This is a think tank with a clear preference for channelling more power and money to the EU level. The question is why organisations advocating such a cause still receive money from the very institution whose power they seek to strengthen, something I already raised 16 years ago.

In May 2025, the European Commission proposed denying funding for lobbying or advocacy work to NGOs specifically focused on health policy, citing the “reputational risk” to the European Union. Last summer, the European Commission sent letters to two NGOs, the “European Network on Smoking Prevention” (ENSP) and the “Smoke Free Partnership” (SFP), instructing them to cease lobbying. Both NGOs receive substantial funding from the European Commission, and the former was even said to be closely involved in the preparation of legislation, in addition to its lobbying activities. The organisations advocate cracking down hard on all alternatives to tobacco, even though EU Member States such as Sweden – which enjoys an exemption from the EU ban on snus – demonstrate that such a policy actually undermines the “Smoke Free” objective, as it is precisely in Sweden that this objective is close to being achieved, partly thanks to the legal availability of alternatives to smoking. A recent tweet put out by the European Parliament on smoking rates even showed that Sweden had the lowest rate in the EU.

However, the European Commission wants nothing to do with this kind of reasoning and follows a rather paternalistic approach to banning as much as possible, thus involving NGOs in the lobbying process. The competent European Commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, therefore advocates higher taxes on tobacco and also wishes to tackle vaping. In the past, he has already stated: “Smoking kills, vaping kills”. In doing so, he simply equates the two, even though the latter is according to the UK Department of Health “95% less harmful to health than normal cigarettes.”

Fortunately, EU member states are not going along with policies based on gut feelings. Proposals from the Cypriot Presidency of the European Council provided for the European Commission’s substantial excise duty increase to be scaled back, and also for a transition period to be introduced. However, the Swedish government is still fiercely opposed, and according to the latest reports, the country is blocking the proposal. The fact that not only the minimum excise duties on cigarettes would be doubled, but that more innovative products, such as e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches, would also face new EU-level minimum taxes, is meeting with particular resistance from Sweden, and that is no coincidence.

Sweden is, in fact, the only EU Member State with an exemption from the EU ban on snus, a nicotine pouch that serves as an alternative to smoking tobacco. Sweden has enjoyed this exemption for more than thirty years now, since it joined the EU. Earlier this year, it was reported that the number of smokers in Sweden has fallen to below 4 per cent of the population. Furthermore, compared to other EU member states, Sweden has 44% fewer tobacco-related deaths, 41% fewer lung cancer cases and 38% fewer cancer-related deaths. One can never be certain of correlation and causation, but it gives pause for thought as to how many deaths and cases of illness could also have been avoided in the rest of the EU by following the Swedish example. Unfortunately, however, the EU-subsidised NGOs are in no way open to this perspective.

The European Court of Auditors as a lever

A critical report by the European Court of Auditors in April 2025 drew much more attention to EU funding of NGOs. It revealed that between 2021 and 2023, the EU spent no less than 7 billion euros through 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 substantial portion of funding from the EU budget is directly granted to the 30 largest NGOs.”

The auditors warned in this regard that the figures in their report that “these figures should be taken with caution, as there is no reliable overview of EU money paid to NGOs”, and regretted that “the information is published in a fragmented way, which hampers transparency, impedes analysis of whether EU funds are overly concentrated on a small number of NGOs, and restricts insight into the role of NGOs in EU policies.”

Negotiations on the European multiannual budget for the period 2028–2034 are now in full swing, and findings of this kind are having a major impact on them. In its proposal, the European Commission envisages reducing the number of programmes within the multiannual budget from 52 to 16, with a significant portion of expenditure – including grant funds for NGOs, particularly in the areas of cohesion, social affairs and agriculture – being channelled through 27 national partnership plans.

In practice, this means that it will become much easier for national governments to prevent NGOs from receiving EU subsidies. A good thing, according to Zsolt Darvas, economist and senior fellow at the EU policy think tank Bruegel. He argues: “The EU budget spends only about 1% of EU GDP, while member states spend almost half. (…) Supporting NGOs is more a national competency. National governments have ample fiscal power to support them if they deem it appropriate.”

Furthermore, financial support for the so-called “civil society” does not fall under the so-called priority spending areas – defence, competitiveness and the digital and green transition. However, the European Commission wants to demonstrate, through AgoraEU – a new programme worth €8.58 billion that merges the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) and Creative Europe programmes – that it intends to continue supporting NGOs, says Euronews correspondent Evi Kiorri. She notes that the proposed funding is even greater than the two programmes it merges, but that “the draft regulation does not explicitly mandate operating grants, the multi-year funding that allows NGOs to do advocacy, watchdog work, and strategic litigation. Without a legal guarantee, future work programmes could simply drop them.

That precedent is already set. In 2025, the Commission discontinued operating grants for health NGOs under EU4Health and shifted to project-only funding. Health organisations filed a complaint with the European Ombudswoman. Civil society sees it as a template for what the MFF could formalise across the board.”

However, from the perspective that it is not the taxpayer’s role to fund policy advocacy, this development should be regarded as positive. Especially given the fact that EU officials have also issued instructions on how policy advocacy by NGOs should be conducted. To sum up: Things are finally starting to move in this area, but there is still a long way to go.

 

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR