Brussels is panicking—and for once, the reason has nothing to do with Russian tanks or climate deadlines. The real crisis is informational. It is an open secret how Europe’s so-called “civil society” has long depended on American money, much of it routed through USAID-linked programs, foundations, and transatlantic NGO networks. That money built careers, offices, media platforms, and a permanent activist bureaucracy whose main function was to police politics and impose Berkeley-style liberalism across the continent. It all changed after President Trump and Secretary Rubio all but abolished USAID, closing down an estimated 83 per cent of its projects—many of them ideological, and indeed subversive, in nature. With Washington pulling back, the EU is scrambling to replace the cash for Europe’s USAID widows.
The idea—currently being discussed behind closed doors in Brussels—appears to be the Europeanisation of what was once the global activist machine of American liberalism. As US funding dries up, the European Commission wants to step in as the new central banker of international wokery. It plans to do so with the next Multiannual Financial Framework (2028–2034). The MFF includes plans for a massive expansion of EU-level funding for NGOs, media outlets, and advocacy groups under a new umbrella programme known as AgoraEU. With a proposed budget of up to €8.6 billion, this scheme would multiply existing funding streams several times over. If approved, it will give Ursula von der Leyen’s European Commission a truly formidable propaganda tool.
Officially, AgoraEU is about “democracy,” “participation,” “pluralism”, and —would you guess it?—“diversity”. In practice, it is about regime—and class—preservation. Before Trump, American funding helped create a professional activist class in Europe, one that operates largely outside democratic accountability. These NGOs do not emerge organically from local communities. They are top-down creations, staffed by graduates of elite institutions, fluent in Brussels jargon, and perfectly aligned with the Commission’s priorities: Mass immigration, climate extremism, gender ideology, speech regulation, and the steady hollowing-out of national sovereignty. Their job is not to reflect public opinion. It is to shape it.
The withdrawal of US funding came to expose just how artificial, indeed precarious, this ecosystem actually was. The moment the money flow stopped, the machine started to implode. If it wasn’t for von der Leyen stepping in with the cash of Europe’s taxpayers, staff would have to be laid off. The subversive action of the NGOs would have ceased. An industry that claims to represent “civil society” was indisputably revealed to be financially dependent on foreign governments.
AgoraEU will serve to centralise and entrench this manipulation machine, turning activist patronage into a permanent and official competence of the EU. Brussels seeks a new status quo in which it would be for the Commission to decide which voices deserve amplification, which causes qualify as “European values”, and which organisations deserve to make themselves heard. Anyone naïve enough to believe this money will, in the name of the “market of ideas”, flow to critics of EU policy should consult the existing record. Conservative, sovereigntist, or migration-critical groups are systematically excluded from existing funding schemes, such as the so-called CERV (Citizens, Equality, Rights, and Values) Programme, or smeared as extremists if they apply. An example of this occurred last year, when the Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe (FAFCE) was denied assistance for apparently opposing the EU’s understanding of “equality”. Everyone understands why that was.
Now, under AgoraEU, NGO funding is set to increase by a stunning 600 per cent. This is a democratic scandal: European taxpayers will be forced to bankroll political activism that actively campaigns against their interests, traditions, and, more often than not, electoral choices. At a time of stagnant growth, collapsing public services, and relentless tax pressure, Brussels is preparing to shovel billions into NGOs whose main achievement is lecturing ordinary citizens on how they’re wrong to be concerned.
This is the same logic behind rule-of-law blackmail, financial sanctions against disobedient member states, and the aggressive expansion of speech controls. Hungary was the prototype for these measures. Poland suffered that fate a lot more directly, through direct EU management of its affairs through PM Tusk. Others are being quietly warned.
What Brussels is building is anything but a democratic Europe. It is a closed, vertical, authoritarian empire. EU institutions will now fund the same NGOs that will then legitimise EU policies. Media outlets funded by the same programmes amplify the message. Dissent is marginalised, silenced, or, as happened in France with Marine Le Pen, tyrannised with petty lawfare and prevented from running altogether.
By replacing the now defunct USAID with EU — that is, taxpayer — money, this shadowy, international, NGO network will not become more legitimate or transparent. Quite the opposite. If anything, it will make it even more dangerous. A foreign-funded activist class might be a scandal, but one paid by the taxpayer is no less intolerable, in particular, when what it has to say its so patently at odds with the public mood.
Should AgoraEU go forward, the Leftist International will not just survive — it will become richer, more centralised, and more insulated from the actual tone of public discourse than ever. It will also confirm what an increasing number of Europeans have already come to understand: That the EU does not act in the name of interest of its peoples, but explicitly against them. The propaganda bubble will grow even more. One day, it will also burst.
The Left resorting to dirty tricks to sabotage the will of right-wing governments