“Greengate” scandal: a lobbying system financed and orchestrated by the European Commission on the Green Deal

"While the US seeks to conquer Mars, the EU is funding NGOs to the tune of 5.5 billion euros to attack our already suffocating companies."

By Germain de Lupiac for The Epoch Times

After the Qatargate scandal in the European Parliament, a new scandal is shaking up the European summit. This time, the interference is not financed by Qatar but by members of the European high bureaucracy. If European lobbying is tolerated although controversial, when it is subsidized by the Commission to influence the votes of MEPs, it raises ethical questions about the use of European funds.

The "Greengate" scandal came from articles published last week in the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf and the French newspaper Le Point. We read that the former Dutch Commissioner Frans Timmermans had organized a system of financing environmental NGOs to influence MEPs and Member States in favor of the Green Deal. A system recognized in plenary by the new Budget Commissioner, Piotr Serafin, on January 22.

Since 2019, the “Green Deal” has introduced punitive standards in the areas of transport, energy, industry and agriculture in order to achieve the objective of carbon neutrality by 2050. The major European growth sectors have been subjected to increasingly restrictive regulations (such as the ban on the sale of new thermal cars in 2035 or the increase in taxes on agriculture), while the rest of the world, led by the United States and China, continued to produce without restrictions in a context of globalized trade. However, electric cars produced in China, Brazilian beef or New Zealand milk do not respect the same environmental and social standards as the European Union, which leads to widespread unfair competition on production and a European economy on the brink of recession.

In this context, the lobbying orchestrated by the European Commission on the Green Deal is all the more enigmatic. Reports have been filed with the French National Financial Prosecutor's Office and the European Public Prosecutor's Office, as well as with the European Anti-Fraud Office.

EU accused of funding environmental NGOs' lobbying in Parliament

French and European elected officials accuse the European Commission of funding environmental NGOs to pressure MEPs to vote for the Green Deal bills.

On 24 January, MEP Jean-Paul Garraud of the Patriots for Europe party sent reports to the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), the French National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) and the European Public Prosecutor's Office. "There is reason to investigate" this "pressure" on MEPs, according to him.

The funding of NGOs and lobbyists has been the subject of debate for several weeks in Brussels, as the Commission wants to revise its rules on the matter. But the tone rose on 22 January, with the publication of an article in the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, which claims that funding contracts for environmental organisations specifically included lobbying objectives for MEPs.

According to the newspaper, one of the NGOs most targeted by these accusations is the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), which brings together 185 environmental associations. The EEB and other similar groups benefit from considerable EU subsidies, giving them equally considerable influence over MEPs.

The newspaper also mentions the European LIFE programme, which supports actions in the fields of environment and climate, and notably mentions the lobbying of NGOs in favour of a law included in the Green Deal on the restoration of Nature, adopted in February 2024 in Parliament.

Before MEPs in plenary session, European Commissioner for Budget and Administration Piotr Serafin admitted that “it was inappropriate for certain Commission services to conclude agreements obliging NGOs to lobby specifically with Members of the European Parliament”. The Commission shares "the European Parliament's objective of improving transparency" of European funding and is awaiting an audit by the European Court of Auditors on the funding of NGOs, he said.

“A very orchestrated collaboration”

"This is a shadow lobbying system that undermines trust in our institutions," reacted Dutch MEP Dirk Gotink (EPP). "Commission officials were working on the communication campaigns of lobbyist networks that they themselves financed," he continued. However, the MEP assures that he is not against the environmental movement: "My criticism is aimed at the European Commission. It seems to be a very orchestrated collaboration, which raises questions about the separation of powers and transparency," he said.

For French MEP Céline Imart (EPP), the gap between the United States and Europe is becoming increasingly obvious: "While the United States is trying to conquer Mars, the EU is funding NGOs to the tune of €5.5 billion to attack our already suffocating companies. » (In the case of the “greengate”, the contracts would represent 15 million euros in 2024, according to Le Point, editor’s note). For German MEP Monika Hohlmeier (EPP), the Commission put pressure “on itself by pretending that these are actions of independent lobbyists”.

The reactions of the green, socialist and progressive parties, including Renew, in favour of the Green Deal, are the exact opposite.

In the centre, Slovak MEP Martin Hojsík (Renew) said he was “recognising” that the European Union finances “civil society”, while companies and professional unions regularly carry out lobbying actions in the European Parliament.

On the left, environmentalist Marie Toussaint criticised right-wing elected representatives for their “hypocrisy”. "They do not want to ensure the proper use of European funds", but "to wage war" on NGOs which "work for the planet", she declared.

A clear distortion of how Europe works 【or sshould work ! (my grain of salt)】

In the European institutional order, it is not the Commission that guides the Parliament and the Member States; on the contrary, it is the Commission that must follow the consensus born of the work of the only two entities that decide: the Council (of the Member States) and the elected representatives of the European Parliament. There is therefore a clear distortion of the functioning of the EU and a diversion of its policy by a high European bureaucracy. Several tens of millions of euros of public money – investigations will establish the extent of this spending – could have been used, not for the general European interest but to push particular political or financial interests, around the Green Deal.

Before this scandal broke out in France, MEP Jordan Bardella called for the immediate suspension of the Green Deal. "Negotiated hand in hand by the right, the Macronists and the left in the European Parliament, the Green Deal is probably one of the biggest degrowth plans that our continent has seen in the last 50 years," he said in an interview with the JDD. "The inflation of standards that (the Green Deal) promises, like the multiplication of constraints on growth that it underpins, will condemn our economy, from agriculture to the automobile industry, from artificial intelligence to our energy policy," accuses the MEP, who says he fears that these regulations will relegate Europe "to the margins of the world." At the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who assured in the fall that she wanted to maintain a "very clear commitment" to the Green Deal but in a way that is "open to technologies, with investments and innovations," is preparing a major conference called "Competitiveness Compass" in February, intended to relaunch the debates within the new European Parliament. The idea is also to present the gigantic public and private investment plan of 800 billion euros in green energy and innovation, which the Draghi report suggested in 2024.

But the election of the new American president Donald Trump has reshuffled the cards of international competition in a few days and this new scandal at the top of the European Commission could contribute to reshuffling the cards in Europe. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who has just taken over the presidency of the European Union for 6 months, also called on the European Parliament on January 22 for a "major deregulation action", including for the Green Deal.