On May 13, a right-wing majority in the European Parliament decided to extend the work of a committee of inquiry tasked with investigating NGOs that receive EU funding by another six months. The committee was established in the wake of revelations that the European Commission had been paying NGOs for years to lobby in favor of initiatives such as the “Green Deal.”
The amount cited is at least 7 billion euros.
The European Commission’s sole role is to propose laws. Using taxpayer money to lobby for the passage of such laws is, of course, unacceptable. In June 2025, the European Parliament voted to establish the special working group tasked with investigating and monitoring NGO funding. The European Commission had already been forced to admit that it had engaged in “unauthorized lobbying activities” funded by EU funds, specifically from the so-called LIFE program. All of this took place during the European Commission’s previous term, with Dutch European Commissioner Frans Timmermans serving as vice-president and the driving force behind the “Green Deal,” a package of costly environmental regulations that burdens European industry and consumers.
The German newspaper Die Welt revealed that “non-governmental organizations were contractually obligated, in exchange for funding, to engage in lobbying and, for example, to conduct campaigns against coal-fired power plants, pesticides, and the free trade agreement between Europe and South America (Mercosur).” This comes as the European Commission, meanwhile, was trying to finally finalize that trade agreement with the Latin American trade bloc Mercosur. As is often the case, one arm of the bureaucracy doesn’t know what the other is doing.
Earlier this year, Dutch MEP Dirk Gotink (NSC) pointed out that the European Commission even funds NGOs that file lawsuits against EU member states. This would mean that, as a de facto extension of the European Commission, they are undermining national democracies. This is despite the fact that, in theory, the European Commission is supposed to serve the member states, as a modest public service focused on the implementation of European treaties.
Ultimately, the problem here lies not so much with the NGOs themselves as with the European Commission, which seems to be completely out of touch with reality. In April, Charles Michel, former Belgian prime minister and former president of the European Council, also leveled strong criticism at European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on this issue. He accused her of pursuing “an extremely authoritarian policy.” With the help of an army of NGOs, of course.
Changes on the horizon?
Fortunately, it seems that change is finally on the way. As early as 2024, the European Commission informed environmental NGOs that they would no longer be able to use EU funds to lobby EU institutions. It recently emerged that in 2025 the European Commission also reduced financial support to organizations in cases where it had become “politically more difficult to justify the funding,” according to one of the organizations affected, the EPC. This is a think tank with a clear preference for channeling more power and money to the EU level. The question is: why do organizations advocating for such a cause still receive money from the very institution whose power they seek to strengthen—an issue I had already raised 16 years ago.
In May 2025, the European Commission proposed denying funding for lobbying or advocacy activities to NGOs specifically focused on health policy, citing the “reputational risk” to the European Union. Last summer, the European Commission sent letters to two NGOs, the “European Network on Smoking Prevention” (ENSP) and the “Smoke Free Partnership” (SFP), ordering them to cease their lobbying activities. Both NGOs receive substantial funding from the European Commission, and it was even reported that the former was closely involved in drafting legislation, in addition to its lobbying activities. The organizations advocate for a strict crackdown on all tobacco alternatives, even though EU member states like Sweden—which enjoys an exemption from the EU ban on snus—demonstrate that such a policy actually undermines the “Smoke Free” goal, since it is precisely in Sweden that this goal is close to being achieved, partly thanks to the legal availability of smoking alternatives. A recent tweet published by the European Parliament on smoking rates even showed that Sweden had the lowest rate in the EU.
However, the European Commission wants nothing to do with this kind of reasoning and follows a rather paternalistic approach aimed at banning as much as possible, thereby involving NGOs in the lobbying process. The responsible European Commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, therefore advocates for an increase in tobacco taxes and also intends to address the issue of vaping. In the past, he has already stated: “Smoking kills, vaping kills.” In doing so, he simply equates the two, even though vaping is, according to the UK Department of Health, “95% less harmful to health than regular cigarettes.”
Fortunately, EU member states are not going along with policies based on gut feelings. The proposals from the Cypriot Presidency of the European Council called for a reduction in the substantial excise tax increase proposed by the European Commission, as well as the introduction of a transition period. However, the Swedish government remains fiercely opposed, and according to the latest reports, the country is blocking the proposal. The fact that not only would minimum excise duties on cigarettes be doubled, but that more innovative products, such as e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches, would face new minimum taxes at the EU level, is meeting with particular resistance from Sweden—and this is no coincidence.
Sweden is, in fact, the only EU member state with an exemption from the EU ban on snus, a nicotine pouch that serves as an alternative to smoking tobacco. Sweden has enjoyed this exemption for more than thirty years now, since it joined the EU. Earlier this year, it was reported that the number of smokers in Sweden has fallen below 4% of the population. Furthermore, compared to other EU member states, Sweden records 44% fewer tobacco-related deaths, 41% fewer cases of lung cancer, and 38% fewer cancer-related deaths. One can never be certain of correlation and causation, but this prompts reflection on how many deaths and cases of illness could have been prevented in the rest of the EU as well by following Sweden’s example. Unfortunately, however, EU-funded NGOs are not at all open to this perspective.
The European Court of Auditors as a Lever
A critical report by the European Court of Auditors in April 2025 drew much more attention to EU funding for NGOs. It revealed that between 2021 and 2023, the EU spent no less than 7 billion euros through various funds on 90 NGOs working on environmental policy, migration policy, or science. A noteworthy revelation in this regard is that, according to the European Court of Auditors, “a substantial portion of funding from the EU budget is granted directly to the 30 largest NGOs.”
The auditors warned in this regard that the data contained in their report “must be interpreted with caution, as there is no reliable overview of EU funds paid to NGOs,” and they lamented the fact that “information is published in a fragmented manner, which hinders transparency, prevents analysis of whether EU funds are overly concentrated on a small number of NGOs, and limits understanding of the role of NGOs in EU policies.”
Negotiations on the European multiannual budget for the period 2028–2034 are now in full swing, and findings of this kind are having a significant impact on them. In its proposal, the European Commission plans to reduce the number of programs within the multiannual budget from 52 to 16, with a significant portion of spending—including grant funds for NGOs, particularly in the areas of cohesion, social affairs, and agriculture—to be channeled through 27 national partnership plans.
In practice, this means that it will become much easier for national governments to prevent NGOs from receiving EU grants. A positive development, according to Zsolt Darvas, an economist and senior fellow at the EU policy think tank Bruegel. He argues: “The EU budget spends only about 1% of the Union’s GDP, while member states spend nearly half of it. (…) Support for NGOs is more of a national competence. National governments have ample fiscal power to support them if they deem it appropriate.”
Furthermore, financial support for so-called “civil society” does not fall within the so-called priority spending areas—defense, competitiveness, and the digital and green transitions. However, the European Commission wants to demonstrate, through AgoraEU—a new €8.58 billion program merging the “Citizens, Equality, Rights, and Values” (CERV) and “Creative Europe” programs—that it intends to continue supporting NGOs, says Euronews correspondent Evi Kiorri. She notes that the proposed funding is even higher than that of the two programs it merges, but that “the draft regulation does not explicitly provide for operating grants—the multi-year funding that allows NGOs to carry out advocacy, monitoring, and strategic litigation activities. Without a legal guarantee, future work programs could simply eliminate them.”
This precedent has already been set. In 2025, the Commission discontinued operating grants for health NGOs under EU4Health, shifting to exclusively project-based funding. Health organizations filed a complaint with the European Ombudsman. Civil society sees this as a model of what the MFF could formalize across the board.”