What does the European Commission think about the creation of a committee of inquiry in the European Parliament into EU funding of NGO lobbying? “This is a matter for Parliament to decide”, said a European Commission spokesperson in an aside comment on Wednesday 2 April.
The day before, the co-chair of the ECR group, the Italian Nicola Procaccini, had declared that they had collected the number of signatures required to initiate the procedure for setting up a committee of inquiry at the European Parliament into what the European conservatives are calling ‘Timmermansgate’, i.e. the funding from the EU budget of lobbying by environmental NGOs.
The ECR Group’s initiative required the support of at least a quarter of the European Parliament’s members, i.e. 180 MEPs out of a total of 720 who sit, under Rule 198 of the European Parliament’s Rules of Procedure (see EUROPE 13579/6).
The European Conservatives, along with the EPP (see EUROPE 13612/16), have condemned the European Commission’s allocation of “substantial sums” to NGOs for “active lobbying, including of Members of Parliament”.
On Tuesday, the Commission confirmed that it recognised the existence of “inappropriate lobbying activities” (see EUROPE 13612/16), and promised greater transparency around the subsidies granted to NGOs.
“We don’t want to give the impression that NGOs are being forced to do anything. The work programmes are drawn up by the NGOs and are their responsibility”, said a spokesperson for the EU institution on Wednesday.
While obtaining European funding under the LIFE programme is accompanied by a contract describing the activities of NGOs, “describing my activities does not mean that the Commission is paying me to carry them out or that it has asked me to do so. These are activities that I myself proposed”, Ariel Brunner of the NGO Birdlife explained to journalists at the beginning of February (see EUROPE 13571/7).
The ECR will propose the creation of the committee of inquiry at the Conference of Presidents (COP) of the European Parliament’s political groups on Thursday 3 April. If approved by these groups, the application will still have to be adopted at the plenary session. The MEPs from the EPP group, who have been very vocal on this issue, will then play a decisive role in a Venezuela-style majority bringing together the Christian Democrats, the Conservatives and the far right.
The ‘Patriots for Europe’ (PfE) group confirmed the support they had given in February (see EUROPE 13580/12) to the ECR group’s initiative. According to PfE, this committee of inquiry should “make recommendations aimed at improving control, transparency and accountability”.
Taking the view that the European Commission was “unfairly” targeting NGOs in the LIFE programme, the S&D group asked the European Commissioner responsible to explain their position in a post on the Bluesky social network. In its view, this decision “runs the risk of legitimising the right-wing’s attacks aimed at silencing civil society”. (Original version in French by Florent Servia)