Over in Brussels, a scandal has erupted over the role of ‘non-governmental organisations’, or NGOs, in European Union decision making.
In a new report, the European Court of Auditors, the EU’s in-house financial watchdog, has criticised the European Commission’s ‘opaque’ monitoring of how EU funds are distributed to these organisations.
Between 2021 and 2023, the EU dished out €7 billion to 90 NGOs through various funds, focused on environmental policy, migration or science. According to the Court of Auditors, 30 of these NGOs received more than 40 per cent of EU funds between 2014 and 2023 – some €3.3 billion.
That may only be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to NGO funding. The auditors warned that the figures ‘should be taken with caution, as there is no reliable overview of EU money paid to NGOs’, and lamented 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.
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