{"id":12119,"date":"2023-07-27T15:26:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-27T15:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beratung.vamtam.com\/?p=12119"},"modified":"2025-12-23T18:59:33","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T18:59:33","slug":"analyst-it-support-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thembomefoundation.org\/?p=12119","title":{"rendered":"Brussels must overhaul \u2018opaque\u2019 funding of NGOs, say auditors"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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RUSSELS \u2014 The European Union is handing out billions of euros to nongovernmental organizations each year without properly monitoring how the money is spent \u2014 or whether it’s even going to genuine NGOs.<\/p>\n

That’s the main finding in a damning report from the European Court of Auditors which is likely to intensify a fierce political fight over how nonprofits use EU grant money.<\/p>\n

Using words like “opaque” and “hazy,” the report finds the EU’s entire process for funding NGOs lacks transparency and calls for reform in the way grants are provided, monitored and disclosed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe picture of EU funding for NGOs remains hazy, as information on EU funding \u2014 including lobbying \u2014 is neither reliable nor transparent,\u201d said Laima Andrikien\u0117, the ECA member in charge of the report, who is also a former lawmaker with the center-right European People’s Party (EPP).<\/p>\n

The criticism will give ammunition to conservative lawmakers in the European Parliament who want to overhaul the way EU money is doled out to NGOs, claiming it lacks transparency and is often used to lobby EU institutions \u2014 criticisms echoed in the report.<\/p>\n

Hanging over the report is the question of lobbying. Are NGOs using public money to influence EU policymaking?\u00a0<\/strong>And if they are, is it being done in line with EU values? On these questions, the ECA found the European Commission lacked curiosity and transparency.<\/p>\n

The Commission “did not clearly disclose the information it held on NGO advocacy activities that were financed by EU grants,” the ECA said.<\/p>\n

Despite the overall critical tone, the report did find some improvements since the ECA’s last assessment in 2018. It also noted that since the period audited in the report, the Commission had\u00a0issued guidance to NGOs<\/a>\u00a0that EU funding should not be used for lobbying. But overall the system was “too opaque,” the ECA’s Andrikien\u0117 said. “Improvements are absolutely necessary. We cannot continue this business as usual.”<\/p>\n

Importantly, the ECA found no evidence of NGOs using EU funds in a way that breached EU law or EU values\u00a0\u2014<\/em>\u00a0including via advocacy or lobbying work paid for with EU money \u2014 but warned the risk of this happening was higher because of the lack of transparency, the agency said during a press briefing on Monday.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BRUSSELS \u2014 The European Union is handing out billions of euros to nongovernmental organizations each year without properly monitoring how the money is spent \u2014 or whether it’s even going to genuine NGOs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":987821,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-report"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thembomefoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thembomefoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thembomefoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thembomefoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thembomefoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12119"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thembomefoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":987825,"href":"https:\/\/thembomefoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12119\/revisions\/987825"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thembomefoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/987821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thembomefoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thembomefoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thembomefoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}