Hungary’s EU minister accuses NGOs of undermining trust, questions funding transparency
In Hungary’s experience, NGOs formerly financed by the US were aiming to undermine trust in public institutions and to destabilise the political regime, János Bóka, the EU affairs minister, said in Brussels on Wednesday.
Bóka told Hungarian journalists that their funding now from EU resources had also lacked transparency. Support contracts concluded by the European Commission had not reached the level of transparency and publicity required by transparency regulations applying to member states, Bóka said. He vowed to request that instances be made public when the EC replaced the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as a financier.
Fidesz calls on the government to appoint a commissioner
The parliamentary group of ruling Fidesz has asked the government to appoint a commissioner to investigate US funds received by “sham” civil organisations, media outlets, activists and “political actors” in the past ten years, group leader Máté Kocsis said on Wednesday.
Calling from the parliamentary group’s session in Balatonfured, in western Hungary, Kocsis said the commissioner would be tasked with travelling to the United States to recover all relevant documents and to regularly brief the government on the data that will then be made public.
Kocsis said that Elon Musk had “busted” the US left as he had made public documents showing that they had spent “millions of dollars to fund those spreading the liberal ideology worldwide, including Hungary, and on those they expected to topple the incumbent government.”
“A foreign state has spent millions of dollars on toppling the democratically elected Hungarian government. They hired our compatriots for the job. This is a network of political and media corruption that must be unveiled … we must know which media platforms, NGOs, self-styled independent institutions and activists took part in this…” Kocsis said.
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Delighted at the opportunity to help out Mr. Bóka!
Listed below is a study prepared for the European Union’s Committee on Budgetary Control. It assesses recent developments in the transparency and accountability of EU NGO funding. The Commission has transitioned all programmes to a single, centralised grant management system that can potentially enhance the public transparency of grant funding significantly.
The study recommends a more comprehensive, systematic approach to public transparency involving the Parliament, Commission, and NGOs.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2023/753974/IPOL_STU(2023)753974(SUM01)_EN.pdf
Now for the good news – Mr. Bókais not alone. In fact, the recommendations are already being addressed:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2024-0036_EN.html
Actually makes for a fascinating read, gives one a flavor as to how NGOs are funded, operate and what they contribute?
Foreign NGOs always represent the interests of their paymasters.