According to Hungarian press reports, the EU Transparency Register secretariat has launched an official investigation into conservative think tank MCC Brussels, after it had been reported by a transparency-monitoring ‘civil organisation’ claiming that MCC Brussels does not comply with the transparency requirements set for EU lobbying groups.
Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), an NGO that has among its chief funders George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, reported the Brussels-based think tank in February, suggesting that the organisation has failed to properly upload its financial data to the EU lobby database that is jointly maintained by the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the European Council. All members of lobbying organisations must register themselves in it, otherwise, they are not allowed to formally meet with European Commission staff or hold events in the European Parliament (EP), and their EP passes can be revoked.
Such gratuitous insinuations are part of a larger campaign waged against the conservative institution: MCC Brussels constantly finds itself in the crosshairs of left-liberal actors. Just a year ago, police raided the venue of the National Conservatism Conference (NatCon), of which MCC Brussels was a co-organiser, at the request of a Brussels district mayor, and even tried to shut the conference down. While the event was being threatened by extremist left-wing protesters, the police claimed the event posed a security threat. The district mayor’s order was overturned by a Brussels court, and the Belgian prime minister condemned the attempted silencing of conservative voices, but the mainstream media never changed its narrative about NatCon as a “far-right gathering.”
But the list of violent attacks against the think tank goes on: venues hosting MCC book launches and speeches by right-wing politicians have been been placed under siege by left-wing activists.
Most recently, on the night of April 14th, radical activists of the Vigilance Cordon Sanitaire group covered the facades of Brussels hotels and venues with ‘anti-far-right’ posters, protesting the hosting of conferences by MCC Brussels. “Here, we welcome the far right #MCC”, the banners read. According to the activists, the MCC Brussels conferences echo the policies and values “of the authoritarian Hungarian regime of Viktor Orbán, the current Prime Minister of Hungary. We find racism, attacks against LGBTQIA+ people, and even climate skepticism characteristic of the Hungarian regime,” the activist was quoted as saying by the anarchist Freedom news website.
The targeted locations were the Stanhope Hotel, NH Berlaymont, Press Club, ACE Events, Thon Hotel Eu, Martin’s, La Librairie Solvay (Edificio), Renaissance Brussels Hotel, and Sofitel Jourdan.
