German conservatives join ‘far-right’ crackdown on civil society

More broadly across Europe, authoritarian (ER: note the vocabulary) leaders have increasingly sought to limit the influence of NGOs, particularly those that support environmental concerns, human rights or equality in opposition to their politics. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has made suppressing civil society one of his government’s consistent priorities, while Slovakia’s leftist-populist Prime Minister Robert Fico has also sought to bring NGOs to heel.

So far, the official line taken by center-right parties has been to keep their distance from the far right in line with Europe’s cordon sanitaire. (ER: Shorthand for the entire European government being against the people.)

But NGOs and left-leaning groups within the European Parliament, such as The Left and the Greens, fear that Germany’s domestic battle could play out at the level of EU institutions by creating a pathway for conservatives and the far right to connect. (ER: We live in hope.)

The center-right European People’s Party has already kickstarted a campaign (a month ago) — backed by the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and the far-right Patriots for Europe — to examine whether European Commission funding for green NGOs was used to lobby in Brussels.

As budget talks loom in the Parliament, the EPP, where the CDU is a key member (Merz’ party), could use this common stance on funding to build a new majority with far-right parties, some left-leaning groups have worried.

“We have seen dangerous tendencies with regard to civil society support in other countries, and I cannot believe the CDU wants to find themselves in this camp,” said René Repasi, head of the German socialist delegation in the European Parliament.

“Singling out NGOs, as the European People’s Party and the CDU are doing, is unjustified and deeply worrying,” said Ciarán Cuffe, co-chair of the European Green Party. “We don’t want the EPP to become some kind of Orwellian thought police, telling civil society what to think.” (Oh, the irony)

Despite the CDU’s domestic probe into civil society in Germany, the EPP has not embraced a committee of inquiry in the Parliament into NGO funding, as proposed by the ECR. But the CDU’s strategy could still embolden EPP members to scrutinize EU-funded NGOs more aggressively within the Parliament’s budget committee.

The EPP group “certainly plans to continue to work on these questions using the tools of the budget committee (CONT) and the parliamentary discharge procedure [an audit capacity given to MEPs],” an EPP group spokesperson said.

NGOs said the CDU’s recent foray into supervision could further erode the role of civil society in European governance at a time when it already faces severe funding cuts from U.S. foreign aid.

“Civil society, globally, is facing an existential crisis due to sweeping funding cuts by the Trump administration and others,” said Nick Aiossa, head of Transparency International in Europe.

“The CDU, in both Brussels and Germany, should be aware they risk exacerbating these devastating trends in the EU.”

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A few days prior to the CDU inquiry, Hungary’s government intensified its push to gain full access to EU-funded NGO contracts ahead of the monthly General Affairs Council.

This came on the heels of accusations from MCC Brussels, a government-aligned think tank in the EU capital, which claimed the European Commission had weaponized NGO funding as part of a “propaganda machine.”

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Featured image source: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

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Published to The Liberty Beacon from EuropeReloaded.com