Fidesz: EC has spent EUR 17 bn on NGOs in recent years

Between 2019 and 2023 the European Commission signed at least 37,000 contracts with NGOs worth a total 17 billion euros, Csaba Dömötör, MEP of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz, said in a statement to the press in Strasbourg on Tuesday.

The list of organisations, he added, included “a multitude of organisations that were supposed to be civic, but they were in fact involved in political activities”. “We will publish the list of organisations because everybody has the right to know what European and Hungarian taxpayers’ money is spent on,” Dömötör said. “These NGOs do not represent groups in society but promote the interests of a small leftist elite: they echo the commission’s position across Europe and weaken the border protection capabilities of member states; in many cases they have started lawsuits against member states in cooperation with immigrants, and organise action against democratically elected governments…” he said.

“Many of these organisations are financed by the European Commission and players overseas, while they do not have a local base of supporters; they are kept alive by a political will rather than locally organised groups of society,” Dömötör said. He added that “several thousand of the subsidised organisations” were registered in Brussels.