Fidesz MEPs accuse EU of withholding data on NGO funding, threaten legal action

The European Parliament’s Patriots for Europe group has submitted 86 requests for access to data of public interest to the European Commission over the funding of NGOs, “but the response was rejection”, Csaba Dömötör, an MEP of ruling Fidesz, said in Brussels on Wednesday.

Dömötör told a conference on the transparency of the financing of NGOs, organised by the party group and the Brussels branch of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, that European taxpayers’ money had been used to support politically active groups, “but there is no transparent, unified database on how they are financed”.

He said the EC had rejected the requests, “citing various absurd reasons: first, they said the request targeted general information rather than concrete agreements, then that the requests were too wide-ranging, and then that all necessary information was available on their website. They are simply not true,” Dömötör said.

The party family will submit further requests and also turn to the European ombudsman, and proceed to go to court should the lists not be forthcoming, he said.

“Hungarian ministries are obliged to regularly publish information on the nature of the contracts they conclude, on the contracting parties and on the sums involved … Further, if someone submits a request for data of public interest, they must allow access to the contracts and their performance within the deadline enshrined in law,” he said.

At the same time, the EC “is utterly unwilling to answer to requests for data on Brussels institutions, even as it continues to push for stricter Hungarian laws on the freedom of information,” he said. The issue is with “a network of political activists”, not “traditional” civil society, he added.