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The damage started earlier this month when the European Commission admitted that some funding contracts with NGOs included what it considered to be “undue lobbying activities,” confirming claims from the center-right European People’s Party.
A damning report by the EU’s financial watchdog, the European Court of Auditors, followed last Monday, slamming the Commission for an “opaque” system with limited oversight on how EU grant money to NGOs was being spent. Then, on Tuesday, MEPs passed amendments calling on Brussels to increase scrutiny over how NGOs spend EU grants.
The painful week follows months of attacks against civil society groups from right-wing MEPs, who accused the Commission of using taxpayer money to get NGOs to lobby on its behalf.
“It’s been stressful and, frankly, frustrating,” said Faustine Bas-Defossez, director at the European Environmental Bureau. “NGOs across Europe — many already stretched thin — have spent months responding to what is clearly a politically motivated and fabricated scandal.”
Nicholas Aiossa, director of Transparency International EU, went further, telling POLITICO that the center right and far right “are waging MAGA-inspired attacks on NGOs,” in a reference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
“As the far right and some in the EPP feel emboldened from what they see with Trump and [Elon] Musk, it’s clear the endgame of this spurious smear campaign is to defund NGOs,” he added. Earlier this year, the Trump administration dismantled the $20 billion annual USAID foreign aid program, a key funder of NGOs globally.
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