Whether at the Brussels level or in our national states, everyone knows something of liberal-leftist groups and of figures embraced by the European Commission. They are very active in political life, they present themselves as the voice of public opinion. But who exactly is paying for them? What is the scale of the phenomenon of these groups — and how do they drive public opinion in Europe? I discussed this with the Hungarian MEP Csaba Dömötör (Fidesz), who, together with his group Patriots for Europe, has made a real — but largely missed by the mainstream media — breakthrough in this matter.
“The European Union is in many crises at once: Identity, security, economic. Due to a series of decisions made by the Brussels elite, Europe is lagging behind in terms of GDP growth and competitiveness. The sovereignty of member states is being attacked in more and more areas. Specific people are responsible for all this. People who were able to impose their policies on member states and continue to do so,” said the politician.
And here begins the most interesting part of the conversation, a topic often overlooked in conservative discussions: How did they do it?
The essence of these actions is to reject the will of the majority of European voters and to push projects designed by the Brussels elite: “They perfectly know that they don’t have the support of the public. To compensate for this with another force, they have created an entire political network directed to distort the will of the voters. Among them is a powerful complex of so called non-governmental organisations that play a political role,” Dömötör told me.
As he points out, this network, whose task is to over-ride the will of the voters, includes not only so-called NGOs, but also the vast majority of liberal and left-wing media in the EU and so-called fact checkers. According to Dömötör, the latter play a de facto censorship role, as Mark Zuckerberg confirmed last January when he dropped fact checkers from Facebook and Instagram.
What kind of money are we talking about? Patriots for Europe group demanded that the European Commission disclose the data.
“We received an incomplete response, but even this list is shocking. Between 2019 and 2023, as many as 37,000 such contracts were concluded for a total of €17 billion,” said MEP Dömötör.
Importantly, he emphasizes that in the new draft budget for the next period, spending on political activists is planned to be doubled, which, according to the Hungarian MEP, is related to President Donald Trump’s suspension of USAID funds.
“Previously, American liberals used US taxpayers’ money to finance a powerful network of left-wing political activists in Europe. When that ended, a powerful lobby emerged, pressuring the European Commission to replace the lost funds with European money. And that is what is happening. We have a battle ahead of us to stop this,” he says.
He adds that most left-wing and liberal NGOs are funded from three sources: American taxpayers, European taxpayers, or one of the branches of the Soros empire. This usually happens in a completely non-transparent manner, without any awareness or consent of the voters. “This support is enormous, far exceeding the support provided by member states to democratically functioning and elected political parties. This creates a false European public opinion. When conservatives take power somewhere, this funding is radically increased. This is the case in Hungary, and it was the case in Poland during the Law and Justice period,” he says.
How does this work in practice? It’s a vicious circle of lies.
Dömötör describes the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, which receives hundreds of millions of forints in various grants and contracts. “The same Helsinki Committee produces hundreds of negative documents about Hungary as part of the so-called European rule of law procedure. These are then used by the European Commission against Hungary and serve as justification for blocking European funds due to my country.”
Another example: “We have a ‘committee for the defence of democracy’ [The Special Committee on the European Democracy Shield] in the European Parliament. Two NGOs were invited to speak there. I quickly checked them out. It turned out that the first had received €700,000 from the European Commission, and the second had received many millions of euros. I took the floor and asked the head of the committee: Shouldn’t we announce before our guests speak that they receive huge sums of money from the European Commission and do not represent society or local communities, but rather the European Commission? This is simply political lobbying, which has nothing to do with the original meaning of the term ‘civil society”, said the Hungarian MEP.
He also recounts how many non-governmental organisations opposed to the current agricultural subsidy system were present at the agriculture committee meeting. Upon investigation, it turned out that all of them received money from the European Commission. One was from Hungary. “I asked farmers in Hungary if they knew it or had heard of it. No. But it wasn’t about the farmers’ voices. The European Commission wants to cut agriculture funding by more than 20 percent in the next budget. So they are using these organisations, supposedly representing farmers, to achieve their goal. Meanwhile, real agricultural organisations are absolutely opposed to changing the subsidy system. But they weren’t even invited. When they came here to protest, they were pushed out of the EP headquarters,” he says.
The same is true of press freedom. In Poland, most of the media was and is liberal-leftist, and the same is true in Hungary. Yet activist groups financed from Brussels, by Soros foundations and American grants, were able to create the false impression that freedom of speech is under threat in these countries.
“Already in 2022, we had a huge scandal with the revelation that at least 5.5 billion forints (€14 million) had been pumped by American foundations into the Hungarian Left’s election campaign. The name ‘Action for Democracy’ probably sounds familiar to you, because I know that they are also active in Polish politics,” says the politician.
Of course it sounds familiar. It is formally a non-governmental player, but in fact very active on the political scene.
I ask Dömötör whether we, the public, have any tools to check how so-called NGOs are financed.
And here is some important news. “Yes, we have uploaded the information obtained from the European Commission to the website ngotransparency.eu where anyone can check in a matter of seconds whether and how much funding a given organisation has received from Brussels. It sheds a light on many issues. In Hungary, for example, it turned out that of the many organisations that often speak out strongly in our political disputes, not a single one operated without funding from the European Commission. Not a single one!”
Yes, this is an important victory in the fight for democracy. Because, as Dömötör points out, when such funded organisations take over the role of the voice of the citizens, the real voice of the people is not heard, no one asks them for their opinion. European taxpayers’ money is also often being used against their own interests.
And that, I would add, is why the EU is where it is today. Democracy may die in darkness, but it can also die from hundreds of powerful, false spotlights.
Tusk weakened by the dawn raids and brutality of his government