Brussels has allocated nearly €80 million to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Poland and Hungary, according to a report by the Hungarian academic center MCC Brussels. These funds, provided by the European Commission, allegedly aim to “destabilize” the governments of Viktor Orbán and the previous Law and Justice (PiS) administration in Poland.
The MCC Brussels report claims that these funds were not and are not used for neutral or humanitarian purposes but instead support organizations engaged in campaigns against democratically elected governments. These NGOs, the report states, act as instruments of political interference to advance the EU’s federalist agenda.
Through the Citizens, Equality, Rights, and Values (CERV) program alone, Brussels funneled €41 million to NGOs in Hungary and €38 million to those in Poland, reports Spain’s La Gaceta. A significant portion of these funds went to groups directly involved in agitation campaigns against legitimate governments, such as Viktor Orbán’s administration in Budapest and the former PiS government in Warsaw.
The report accuses the EU of creating a “propaganda-by-proxy network” under the guise of promoting “EU values,” where NGOs and think tanks serve as “ideological tools” for European federalism. This strategy, far from supporting political pluralism, has become a means of pressuring governments that do not align with the EU establishment’s progressive vision.
In Hungary, the Ökotárs Foundation, which received over €3 million, was labeled by the Orbán government as a “local hub for foreign influence.” In Poland, after the 2023 elections, an EU-funded NGO openly celebrated PiS’s defeat, highlighting the role of “EU pressure and civil society” in the government change.
The MCC Brussels report documents how the European Commission spends billions of euros to advance its political agenda, including the creation of a federal European state and the promotion of “woke” policies on immigration, gender, and climate. The authors conclude that “this propaganda-by-proxy model is fundamentally anti-democratic.”