A month ago, conservative and right-wing lawmakers, also known as MEPs in the European Parliament, challenged whether NGOs should accept public funding through European Union programmes such as LIFE to participate in EU policy-making.
It’s critical to note that LIFE, the EU’s funding mechanism for the environment and climate action, was assumed by the European Parliament and the European Council years ago and has been performing ever since. According to critics, in an increasingly aggressive manner, that NGOs “misuse” these funds to excessively and privately influence European Union decision-making and that this forms a “scandal.”
In some cases, funding from the EU’s €5.4 billion environmental programme LIFE may have been wrong, a senior European Commission official has revealed, as right-wing lawmakers protested regarding the use of public funds to assist non-governmental organisations lobby MEPs and within the European Union executive itself.
Budget Commissioner Piotr Serafin informed MEPs the EU executive had only followed the letter of EU law when it assigned public money to fund environmental NGOs. “The Commission remains committed to supporting organisations that contribute to a vibrant and diverse civil society in line with the LIFE Regulation,” Serafin said, but he realized there’d been mistakes.
“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.
On the other hand, MEP Monika Hohlmeier, the vice-chair of the parliamentary budget committee, said there’d been “misappropriation” of European Union funds, indicating the EU Commission’s environment department, DG ENVI, had effectively funded NGOs with money particularly to lobby against farmers, and against other EU Commission approaches. Hohlmeier said her concerns were raised when she studied some 30 funding agreements from 2022 and 2023, as part of the EU Parliament’s annual scrutiny of EU budget allocations.
She stated that, under specific contracts, NGOs were considered to organise mass demonstrations and mass mailings, and to influence legislators on the eve of critical votes.
NGOs also utilized the grants to lobby on behalf of DG ENVI against EU free trade deals with the likes of the Mercosur bloc, Hohlmeier stated. “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.”
In accordance with the EU transparency register, a BayWa subsidiary that specializes in renewable energy technology acquired €6.5 million from the LIFE Programme in 2022, far exceeding the €700,000 annual max that NGOs are allowed to apply for.
