Conservative MEPs Attempt to Stop “New Green Lobbying Scandal”

A Dutch and an Italian conservative lawmaker in the European Parliament (EP) have taken steps to ensure that the lobbying scandal surrounding the approval of the Green Deal does not repeat itself.

Sander Smit of the Dutch Farmer–Citizen Movement (BBB) and Pietro Fiocchi of the Brothers of Italy (FdI) filed an objection to the future financing of the so-called LIFE programme, the EU’s funding instrument for the environment and climate action.

“It is our duty to protect the institutional integrity of the European Parliament from any undue influence, whether direct or indirect, including that which arises from the use of funds for targeted lobbying activities,” Sander Smit said at a meeting of the EP’s climate committee on Tuesday, March 18th.

The MEP was referring to recent revelations that the European Commission used public funds to finance environmental NGOs to push its climate agenda. In other words, European taxpayers’ money was used to subsidize groups that then lobbied in favor of the Green Deal in Brussels.

Members of the European Parliament were among those targeted by lobbyists.

Sander Smit and his BBB party, an advocate of Dutch farmers who have had to bear the brunt of harmful EU climate policies and tax hikes, were one of the first to raise their concerns following the eruption of the scandal.

Speaking on Tuesday, Sander Smit said:

The Commission’s approach continues to blur the line between governance and advocacy, creating a framework where public funds can be leveraged to exert political pressure on policy makers.

He called on the future funding of the LIFE programme to be more transparent because a lot of money from this programme ends up with NGOs for communication and lobbying activities.

The LIFE programme—which supports projects in the field of nature restoration and sustainability—has a substantial budget of €5.4 billion but, according to Smit, transparency is completely lacking. “It’s about the separation of powers and preventing a new green lobbying scandal,” he said.

The European Commission has downplayed any wrongdoing, with Teresa Ribera, Vice President for competitiveness and climate saying “it is not lobbying” but “raising public awareness.”

But many MEPs, especially on the right side of the European Parliament are fuming.

Hungarian MEP Kinga Gál,  vice president for the conservative Patriots for Europe (PfE) group, said last week that the green lobbying scandal was “just the tip of the iceberg.”

An increasing amount of serious information is coming to light that the European Commission is funding hundreds of political activist groups across Europe to push its own policies, extremist ideologies, and often to attack sovereigntist governments.

She demanded full transparency on the funding of NGOs and said the PfE has submitted more than eighty public interest requests to the European Commission in recent weeks.

Whether these formal objections and requests will have any impact at all remains to be seen. However, the Commission is not known for giving in to demands easily.