The financing of non -governmental organizations (NGOs) by the European Commission is “opaque” and exposes the Executive to “Risks to its reputation,” concluded the European Court of Auditors after a long investigation. But your report may not be the smoking weapon that some critics were waiting.
“We have not found a unique case during our audit of an NGO that violated the EU values,” said TCE report member responsible for the report, Laima Andrikienė, journalists at an information meeting shortly before publication.
However, Laima Andrikienė said that his cabinet had examined a random sample of only 90 contracts, so he could have escaped something. “We have hundreds of thousands of NGOs,” said Andrikien. “Any case, any example of NGOs that violate the EU values would endanger the reputation of the European Union.”
Andrikienć also confirmed that there is no legal barrier that prevents civil society groups from presenting their arguments directly to legislators, who must publish the details of all meetings with lobbyists, either from civil society or companies.
“From our point of view, the rules allow the NGO to make lobes,” Andrikien said. “If we want something different, it depends on legislators to decide, not the auditors.”
ECA published its conclusions at a time when the question of NGO financing became a controversial political issue in Brussels. Last week, the European Parliament rejected by a single vote a motion of censure to the EU Executive due to the operational subsidies granted through the environmental program of life.
The conservative European Popular Party (PPE) states that the commission has instructed the NGO to press the deputies to promote specific policies within the ecological pact, a central political agenda of the first mandate of President Ursula von der Leyen, between 2019 and 2024.
Lack of “concrete evidence
However, the group and its allies to the right showed no concrete evidence to support these accusations.
The budget commissioner, Piotr Serafin, admitted in January that he had been “inappropriate for some services of the committee to hold agreements that force the NGO to specifically press the members of the European Parliament.”
But despite the agreements of some parliamentary groups and media investigations on the escape of information on the confidential operational subsidies, such obligations have not been demonstrated, that they have been vehemently denied by environmental groups.
And it seems that the Luxembourg -based audit office, which analyzed two operational subsidies of the life program (is not mentioned in the report) during its investigation, the same result failed.
Some “lobbying elements” were specified in the work programs that candidates must prepare when they request subsidies, said Tomasz Kokot, an ECA employee who worked in the audit. But the auditors were not in a position to say if, as the right legislators declared, the committee employees had required such commitments to the candidates.
“All we can say is that we have not found concrete evidence of any of these situations,” Kokot told reporters.
The auditors were also asked why they chose to focus their research on the NGO of Germany, Spain and Sweden, although they explicitly declared that one of the main factors that motivated their investigation was the 2022 scandal, which involved Qatar officials, where the NGOs were used to channel money for corrupt legislators, a case that continues to be discussed.
“We chose them because they had the greatest expenses communicated,” Andrikien said, appointing the European Social Fund Plus and the background, migration and integration of asylum as the two largest sources.
ADVERTISINGThe commission’s response
The ECA made three recommendations to the Commission. The EU Executive declared that “partially accepts” the update of the legal definition of the NGO to clarify, by the end of the year, the criteria of “government independence” and the situation in which an “entity continues the commercial interests of its members.”
The European Commission said that “it would explore the viability” of more frequent updates of the financial transparency system, which allows it to investigate EU expenses by 2029.
The third recommendation was the only one that the Community Executive accepted in its entirety: “Explore the viability of developing current systems to include verification based on the risk of beneficiaries (including NGOs) with EU values to detect possible infractions.” The deadline is 2028.
With respect to the issue of alleged lobbying activities through the NGO, the Commission referred to the guidelines published last May, shortly after the launch of the audit, which “clarify that the financing agreements that involve specifically detailed activities aimed at the EU institutions and some of its representatives, even if they are legally correct, may imply a risk to the reputation of the Union.”
ADVERTISINGEmployees responsible for the financing task must take into account this guide, he wrote.
Ariel Brunner, director of BirdLife Europe, a beneficiary of a subsidy, considered that the fact that the auditing court did not identify any problem with the financing of the life program is justification. “This report confirms what we say a long time ago: the real problem is not respectable NGOs, but the disguised lobbyists who pass through civil society.”
“What was found was the fault of the commission and national governments to verify who is really behind some of the NGOs that do not represent public interests,” Brunner said.
