Continuing witch-hunt on civil society

At today’s meeting of the Committee on Budgetary Control (CONT), our four groups - the Socialists & Democrats, Renew, Greens/EFA and The Left - jointly voted against the creation of a Working Group, whose supposed aim is to uncover alleged irregularities in EU funding for civil society. The Working Group had previously been pushed through in closed-door meetings by a slim majority of conservatives and the far-right (EPP, ECR, PfE, ESN) and was confirmed in today’s committee vote with the same slim majority.

We strongly condemn this move. We see it as a direct attack and a witch-hunt on civil society by the conservatives and the far-right, whose sole aim is to delegitimize voices that don’t share their worldview. The accusations against civil society have long been disproven: neither the European Commission nor the European Court of Auditors have found a single irregularity in their work. Where there is no scandal, one is being manufactured – at the expense of democracy, civil society, and the credibility of the European Parliament itself.

There are real problems in Europe that urgently need our attention: The far-right in the European Parliament has just been found to have misused 4.3 million Euro in EU taxpayer funds. Billions in EU funds continue to disappear into Orban’s kleptocratic system. Instead of tackling these challenges, the EPP, ECR, PfE and ESN are distracting the public and are wasting Parliament’s valuable resources.

Daniel Freund for Greens/EFA

Carla Tavares for the Socialists and Democrats

Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy for Renew

Jonas Sjöstedt for The Left.