The conservative European People’s Party (EPP) has questioned the use of public funds for campaigns they say run against the EU’s own interests. The Commission says it’s fixed the problem, but some see it as part of a wider attack on environmental campaigners.
Some financing from the EU’s €5.4 billion environmental programme LIFE may have been inappropriate, a senior European Commission official has admitted, as right-wing lawmakers protested about the use of public funds to help non-governmental organisations lobby MEPs and within the EU executive itself.
Budget Commissioner Piotr Serafin told MEPs on Wednesday evening the EU executive had merely followed the letter of EU law when it allocated public money to support environmental NGOs.
“The Commission remains committed to support organisations that contribute to a vibrant and diverse civil society in line with the LIFE Regulation,” Serafin said, but he conceded there’d been errors.
“I have to admit that it was inappropriate for some services in the Commission to enter into agreements that oblige NGOs to lobby members of the European Parliament specifically,” he said.
He gave no instances of specific cases – nor did Commission spokespeople when subsequently asked by Euronews.
Guidance issued last May instructed officials to take “urgent follow-up actions such as amending ongoing grant agreements”. Serafin said this had rectified any such problems.
‘Misappropriation’
The budget commissioner defended the role of NGOs in EU policy making, however. He stressed the importance of civil society in EU debates, and “the critical role of NGOs in contributing to the development and implementation of EU policies and legislation”.
“We do not need to agree with the views of these organisations,” the senior budget official added. “However, their perspective helps the European Commission and the European Parliament to make well informed decisions.”
MEP Monika Hohlmeier (Germany/EPP), the vice-chair of the parliamentary budget committee who instigated the debate, said there’d been “misappropriation” of EU funds, suggesting the Commission’s environment department, DG ENVI, had effectively given NGOs money specifically to lobby against farmers, and against other Commission policies.
In a written statement, Hohlmeier told Euronews her concerns were raised when she examined some 30 funding contracts from 2022 and 2023, as part of the parliament’s annual scrutiny of EU budget spending.
She said that, under certain contracts, NGOs were supposed to organise mass protests and mass mailings, and to pressure lawmakers on the eve of key votes.
NGOs also used the funding to lobby on behalf of DG ENVI against EU free trade agreements with the likes of the Mercosur bloc, Hohlmeier said – in spite of the fact that the Commission’s own President Ursula von der Leyen has been a prominent backer of deeper trade relations with the bloc that includes Brazil and Argentina.
“Every NGO has the right to have its own political view and to express this view publicly,” Hohlmeier said. “But to use taxpayers’ money to organise and implement untransparent and hidden lobby structures is inappropriate.”
Farmers too?
Other lawmakers said it was unfair to single out environmental NGOs, given that EU money is also ploughed into other interest groups.
“Are we going to start also investigating if any of the subsidies from CAP [Common Agricultural Policy] was used to bring farmers to [Brussels] when they were protesting?” asked Martin Hojsík (Slovakia/Renew). “I hope not.”
Jonas Sjöstedt (Sweden/Left) said right-wing MEPs were happy enough to take ideas from industry lobbyists.
He directly targeted Hohlmeier, who is on the payroll of the German agricultural trading firm BayWa. The German lawmaker’s annual €75,000 earnings make hers one of the most lucrative side gigs of any MEP.
According to the EU transparency register, a BayWa subsidiary that deals in renewable energy technology received €6.5 million from the LIFE Programme in 2022 – far in excess of the €700,000 annual maximum that NGOs can tap it for.
“NGOs and environmental organisations have but a fraction of that kind of resources, despite the fact that they are representing millions of citizens,” Sjöstedt said, accusing Hohlmeier of “hypocrisy”.
Hohlmeier has denied that her board membership represents any conflict of interest. “My activities in BayWa have always been transparent,” she said on Wednesday when the issue was raised by the Corporate Europe Observatory, an NGO that monitors business lobbying.
“I was not involved in the creation and setup of the LIFE programme [or] the decision of BayWa to apply for funding through the LIFE programme, nor did I have knowledge of the award of funding through the LIFE programme to BayWa until today.”
“I have long been an advocate of more transparency for agricultural and cohesion recipients of EU funding, and even a clear capping in the first pillar of CAP spending,” she said. “The accusations brought up against me personally yesterday have the aim to move the debate away from the real subject, which is a serious mishandling of EU funds.”
EU auditors set to probe
Echoing Serafin’s remarks, a Commission spokesperson on Thursday clarified the EU executive’s new stance on funding civil society groups.
“Advocacy remains, of course totally acceptable, but it has to be carried out in a much less targeted fashion and not towards members of the European institutions directly and specifically,” spokesperson Balazs Ujvari said.
Patrick ten Brink, general secretary of the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) – which received 10% of its funding from the LIFE Programme last year – called for an “honest conversation about who is lobbying whom” in Brussels.
“Let’s start by addressing these issues as private money should not be used for people in public office within the European Parliament itself,” ten Brink told Euronews.
Tycho Vandermaesen, policy director at the WWF European Policy Office said it was “troubling to see some parliamentarians questioning the integrity of reputable civil society organisations”, but noted that a majority of “democratic” MEPs had supported ongoing EU funding for NGOs during the debate.
The European Court of Auditors is due to present by June special report into such support, but its investigation has focused on groups based in Germany, Spain and Sweden – not the Brussels-based organisations at the centre of the current political ruckus.
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