- “Thank you. Chair. I can only underline also the Commission's full support for transparency, for transparency of all funding to all beneficiaries and recipients. And I would also like to underline our full support to the importance of having a strong and vibrant civil society, and to come back very quickly on the three recommendations, as I have already pointed out, the NGO definition. So the first step was to follow up on the broad request to actually have one. It was a difficult discussion. This was one of the trickiest things when we negotiated the financial regulation recast to actually agree on a formulation. And this is a compromise formulation. And if we see that things need to be clarified based on the experience that we now slowly start to gain, we will issue guidance. So we're fully aligned here with the request of the Court of Auditors updating the financial transparency system. I already said we're looking into this. We're using all possibilities Abilities, uh, as far as we have money also to feed the systems to update this system more quickly. And it's going to be a very interesting challenge for the future to see that we get the member state data on shared management into that system as well, because I'm the first one to fully acknowledge that as long as we don't have data from shared management, which is 60 whatever percent of EU funding, the picture from the financial transparency system cannot be complete.”
Financial regulation · Transparency requirements of EU institutions · Regulation of NGOs in Europe
- “So in the past there was no definition of NGOs and that was pointed out. Many member states until today have no national definition of an NGO. So this is simply, in many member states, an unregulated area. We have now, since September last year, a definition of the. At EU level with respect to uh, to uh beneficiaries from the EU budget. Now that information is available on of on who gets funding and direct management is in the financial transparency system. In addition, the Commission voluntarily publishes the substance of what is a programme about, what does it fund, what do the different calls amount to Uh, in its uh, Grants and Tenders portal so everyone can look up what is a concrete call under the life program, for example, about does it entail lobbying activities, etc.? Thirdly, everyone who is involved in lobbying activities must be registered in the transparency Register. And if you look there, you clearly see whether a given entity is considering itself as an NGO and what it is doing with respect to activities addressed to the European institutions. So this information is all publicly available. Now, with respect to values, uh, every grant applicant, no matter whether the applicant is an NGO or another entity, has to sign up in the grant agreement to respect EU values. In addition, everyone has to do first a self-declaration which for example, says I have paid my social security contributions, I am not in bankruptcy and I have not been condemned for.”
Transparency requirements of EU institutions · Regulation of NGOs in Europe · Transparency requirements for interest groups
- “And to conclude and sorry for being a bit longer. So, uh, looking at the recommendations to the that the court has made to the Commission, as you have seen, we have, uh, accepted them or partly accepted them, partly accepted them because, uh, full acceptance would not be within our powers because in part, we would need member states to deliver, but where we can accept them. For example, uh, we have this new definition of NGOs where the legislator has said independence from government. Um, we will certainly, of course. Look now, What concrete practical problems will we encounter using that criterion? And if we see that there is room for clarification, we will of course do that. So here we are happy to. To follow up on the recommendations of the court and uh, or improving the the quality of information, we are permanently improving the financial transparency system. We are also now looking at whether we can update it more quickly, because that was one of the issues which has been raised. And on strengthening the verification of compliance with EU values. I have already replied, explaining to you the multi-layered system that we have in place, uh, both for NGOs and other beneficiaries of EU funding. How this is being checked. Thank you.”
Transparency requirements of EU institutions · Regulation of NGOs in Europe · Discharge of EU institutions and agencies
- “And where it happens, we will draw all consequences and we have the tools to do that. And on the other hand, to keep administrative burden to a minimum. And then finally there was the question on undue funding from Mr. Freund. Undue lobbying. Sorry. Yes, we're looking into this, but if you want, uh, indications are in our guidance already where we which is public and we are instructing all our evaluators, uh, and, and and those who apply for funding to look at this guidance. And that is just taking one of the examples we listed there. Uh, but the detail is you have to see it, uh, to, to uh, to then say, for example, and that's, that's from our public guidance, identifying specific members or officials of an institution to evaluate or describe their positions. So depending on what this is in our guidance, I'm quoting. Um, so if uh, if uh. An applicant proposes a program, uh, a work program, because this is never asked for by the commission. This is never asked for in the call to, to do a specific profiling of certain persons, etc.. The that could amount to, uh, undue lobbying, but we'll, uh, we're working on this and we'll see to get you a reply to this. Thank you.”
Transparency requirements of EU institutions · EU policy on sustainability criteria in public funding · Transparency requirements for interest groups
- “Uh, and then finally, on the values, uh, we will certainly also look into what can be realistically done, uh, with checking, uh, on respect of values and proactive checking of, of, of the respect of EU values, which is one area where we have to look at for all beneficiaries. And one way there is to actually see when you have a program that specifically funds activities that have a higher risk, that there may be non-respect of EU values. Already today, we tell our authorizing officers that they may have to do some specific checking upfront, but this you would not do across the board. We have hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries applying for calls, etc. we must really and this was a strong request from the Parliament when we finalised the negotiations for the financial regulation to really try to bring down the administrative burden, in particular for small beneficiaries of EU funding. So we try to square the circle with fully committed both to find good systems that make sure that abuses or non-respect of EU values is not tolerated. We fully agree that this shall not happen.”
EU policy on sustainability criteria in public funding · Conditions to access EU budget
- “Thank you. To put out a couple of, uh, pieces of information to directly react on what has been said. That is, first, we have no evidence that supporting non-governmental organizations as compared to any other beneficiaries of EU funds poses a bigger risk in terms of not correct spending, etc., to the EU budget rules in principle do not require any differentiation Between NGOs or other beneficiaries, they can apply for EU funding just like any. Other one who fulfils the specific criteria for the specific programme. Every beneficiary under direct management is publicly available, with name and the amounts of money received in the financial transparency system of the Commission. This system, as of today, does not contain data for shared management, but it. This will come. This has been recently decided, but already today and for many years. Everyone can check in the financial transparency system online. How much a given beneficiary has received. Now what we. What the. The commission is fully in line with all transparency obligations that the legislator has written into the rules. As was correctly pointed out since September of last year, we have an EU wide definition of a non-governmental organization written into the financial regulation which we will now apply. And we have in addition now also an obligation to indicate in direct management grant applicants information whether the entity is an NGO or not. There can possibly be.”
Transparency requirements of EU institutions · Regulation of NGOs in Europe · Transparency requirements for interest groups
- “For various other. Infringements. For example. In competition. In competition law. This self-declaration is the first step of several layers that the Commission applies when checking any beneficiary of funding. There is no indication available to us that NGOs have a specifically higher risk in any of these things. That would call for an even tighter scrutiny of this self-declaration, but the self-declaration is not enough anyway, because on top of it, as I said, we have the obligation that everyone signs up in a grant agreement to respect EU values as this was specifically mentioned. And then we have, uh, two tools that are also mentioned in our reply to the court, which is the um system in Aracne, which is a search tool which allows us and all our authorising officers use that to pick out a beneficiary who has already been involved in the, in, for example, illegal activities. And in addition, we have our early detection and exclusion system, which we have automatized in the E grant system. So anyone who is flagged under the early detection and exclusion system for having run afoul of EU rules, as I have just mentioned is automatically signalled before we ship out a payment to that applicant. So we have a multi-layered system to make sure both for NGOs and other entities, that when a problem comes up, we can act quickly.”
Regulation of NGOs in Europe · EU policy on sustainability criteria in public funding · Conditions to access EU budget