The ruling Fidesz’s EP delegation said on Friday that the European Parliament’s Patriots for Europe group has “achieved a breakthrough” by contributing to the establishment of an EP body tasked with probing “suspicious contracts” related to the European Union funding of NGOs.
The MEPs told MTI that PfE group’s members have for months demanded full transparency in connection with the contracts of NGOs funded by the European Commission.
“European citizens have a right to know where their money ends up and for what purpose,” they said. “Enough of the deceitful games of the Brussels bureaucrats! We will keep going until it becomes clear to everyone that this is about a group of left-wing activists who pursue political activities with billions of euros in funding from Brussels, often against the interests of taxpayers.”
Fidesz said this went against the principles of democracy and transparency, vowing that the Patriots would “uncover the truth”. One of the first important steps in this process was the establishment of an investigative working group, Kinga Gal, the head of the Fidesz delegation in the European Parliament and the first deputy leader of the PfE group, said.
They said the PfE group had been the first to highlight through a series of data requests the fact that the EC had signed more than 37,000 contracts with “so-called civil society groups” worth a total of 2,800 billion forints (EUR 6.9bn) financed from taxpayer money. Many of these organisations, they added, functioned as political activists whose activities included promoting illegal migration and “forcing green ideology” at the expense of farmers, entrepreneurs and border protection.
But a right-wing majority that came together with the help of the PfE group has voted to set up a working group to investigate “suspicious NGO contracts”, thereby preventing “Brussels’s left wing from sweeping the matter under the rug again”, the statement said.
Fidesz said the Patriots group would continue its fight for transparency by demanding an investigation into the Pfizergate case and other “abuses by Brussels”.
