The request follows claims the EU executive was paying nonprofits to lobby on its behalf.
Hungary has requested that European Union member countries get full access to grant contracts signed between the European Commission and nongovernmental organizations, in a move that ramps up conservative attacks on EU funding of the nonprofit sector.
The country’s EU affairs minister, János Bóka, said ahead of the General Affairs Council that the issue had been put on the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting.
“The question is whether the current legal framework and institutional practice ensure the transparency and regularity of NGO funding,” Bóka told journalists ahead of the meeting.
The demand comes as conservative and center-right members of the European Parliament have in recent months been looking into grant agreements signed between environmental NGOs and the Commission. Some have accused the Commission of using the funds to get NGOs to lobby in favor of the European Green Deal on its behalf.
“We will make two proposals: One is that the Council [of the European Union] itself should demand full and unrestricted access to these contracts and grant agreements that the Commission has concluded with NGOs, » the Hungarian minister explained.
“The other proposal is that the Council, together with the Commission, should develop a transparency system that will allow member states and European citizens to see these contracts for themselves, to consult them and to make their own assessment,” he added.
Similar efforts have been recently backed by MCC Brussels, a think tank affiliated with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The controversial player in the EU scene presented a report last week accusing the Commission of fueling a “propaganda machine” by giving grants and subsidies to NGOs, with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ rights organizations that rely on EU funding.
The push against NGOs is also coming from more center-right forces, as a German MEP last month fired the starting gun on a battle that may set the tone for years to come. Monika Hohlmeier, from the conservative European People’s Party, raised concerns about alleged irregularities she claimed to have discovered in Commission grants to green NGOs.
However, the confidential contracts, seen by POLITICO, do not offer substantive evidence to support claims that the EU executive paid green groups to lobby on its behalf.
The Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control has since asked to see an extended list of grants awarded by seven different Commission departments over 2023. But the committee has only been granted “limited and selective” access to certain contracts, as Bóka pointed out.
“The European Court of Auditors is also producing a report on NGO funding this year [expected in April], but this report is not complete, does not cover all policy areas and does not cover all member states,” Bóka said.
“We do not expect anything special, we just expect the European institutions, especially the Commission, to apply the same standards of transparency to themselves that they expect from the member states,” the minister added.
Elisa Braun and Louise Guillot contributed to this report.
