Leaked document seen by Euronews shows the European Commission is considering a rethink of funding rules, as NGOs warn they need public support to act as a counterbalance to powerful industry lobbies.
Environmental and climate campaign groups in Brussels have urged the European Commission not to cut operational grants through its €5.4bn LIFE Programme amid fears of a clampdown on funding for advocacy work.
While the LIFE budget for the period 2021 to 2027 already represents only 0.3% of EU spending when post-COVID recovery funds are taken into account, the amount of funding earmarked for the day-to-day working of NGOs amounts to little over €15m a year.
“A thriving democracy requires infrastructure and resources that allow citizens’ voices to reach decision-makers,” runs a letter to President Ursula von der Leyen and other Commission top brass, dated 5 December and signed by some 30 green groups.
“Unlike resource-rich actors such as foreign governments, multinational corporations, and business associations, European citizens and their civil society organisations (CSOs) and wider non-governmental organisations (NGOs) often lack adequate resources to be present in public dialogues at the European level,” they write.
The civil society groups are concerned that their funding may fall foul of a growing backlash against environmental policy – with von der Leyen’s political family, the centre-right European People’s Party having already succeeded in weakening several strands of ‘Green Deal’ legislation with support from parties further to the right.
In written questions from the European Parliament’s budgetary control committee, seen by Euronews ahead of a hearing with budget commissioner Piotr Serafin on Monday (9 December), MEPs suggest payments to NGOs could mean the Commission “indirectly lobbying the Parliament through third parties”, raising “serious [ethical and reputational] concerns”.
Serafin replied that the EU executive took such concerns “very seriously” and had issued internal guidance to its various departments this year clarifying “which activities should not be mandated as a requirement or condition for Union financing”.
Media reports last month suggested several NGOs had received letters specifying that they could no longer use EU funding for certain types of lobbying and advocacy work.
In his written reply, Serafin dismisses the suggestion of indirect lobbying, noting that “the entities receiving funding under such grants remain fully and solely responsible for their own views, which might not represent the Commission’s views”.
The EU executive was awaiting a special report from the European Court of Auditors on union funding to NGOs, due in the first half of 2025, Serafin wrote.
In their open letter, the NGOs – among them Friends of the Earth Europe, the European Environmental Bureau and Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe – stress that the legislation behind the LIFE Programme clearly states the fund should “support the development, implementation, monitoring and enforcement of relevant Union legislation and policy on the environment”.
However, in his reply to MEPs, the newly installed commissioner wrote that some agreements on “specifically detailed activities directed at EU institutions…even if not breaching the legal framework, entail a reputational risk”.
The maximum operating grant to any one organisation this year was €700,000, granted to the above three groups, and also Transport & Environment, the Health and Environment Alliance, Oceana, the Renewables Grid Initiative, Wetlands International Europe, and the Carbon Disclosure Project.
In many cases, the funding through the Life Programme makes up well over half the annual budget of NGOs active in Brussels, data in the EU transparency register shows. By contrast, the European Chemical Industry Council lists its estimated annual costs at over €10 million and the lobby group Business Europe over €6m.
