EU and member state funding for non-governmental organisations, and its possible links to radicalisation, was examined in detail at a breakfast roundtable in the European Parliament on Thursday, 20 November.
The meeting in the Members’ Salon, attended by EU Today, was hosted by Bert-Jan Ruissen MEP (ECR) together with the International Movement for Peace and Coexistence (IMPAC) and the ECR Group.
Ruissen opened the event by linking the debate to the European Court of Auditors’ (ECA) 2025 special report on EU support to NGOs. He underlined that Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee and the annual discharge procedure provide opportunities to question commissioners on specific projects, but warned that securing a majority in the House for tougher conditionality remains difficult.
IMPAC’s General Secretary, Nigel Goodrich, then framed the discussion around EU and member state funding to politicised NGOs where there is a risk of radicalisation. Radicalisation, he said, “is a threat to many of us, particularly to minorities”. Referring to the ECA report, he recalled that from 2021 to 2023 the EU committed €4.8 billion to more than 12,000 NGOs in internal policy areas. “The standard is the statement of values of the European Union,” he told participants. “If any organisation in receipt of money cannot and will not support those values or reflect those values, they should not get one euro of EU funding.”
Goodrich linked opaque funding to the situation of vulnerable communities including Yazidis, Coptic and Chaldean Christians, other Christian denominations, Mormons and Jews. In his view, funding to politicised NGOs can “inadvertently, perhaps, or otherwise, fuel radicalisation” that later impacts these groups, both in third countries and within the EU.
The keynote address was delivered by Vincent Chebat, Senior Researcher at NGO Monitor. Citing the ECA’s findings, he recalled that “the European Commission did not properly disclose certain EU-funded advocacy activities, such as lobbying, and there are no active checks to ensure that the funded NGO respect EU values”, exposing the Union to reputational risk.
In his presentation, Chebat argued that NGO Monitor has for years identified what he called an “NGO network” in Gaza and the West Bank receiving significant funding from European governments and the European Commission. “These organisations claim they’re advancing a human rights agenda,” he said later in an interview with EU Today, “but basically they use the facade of human rights to promote radical discourse against Israel, against the Jews, [and] contribute to the radicalisation that might end up also with terrorism.”
He highlighted the Palestinian NGO Miftah, described as a women’s rights body based in Ramallah, which he said is currently receiving a €1 million EU grant. Since 7 October, he argued, Miftah has “been spreading fake news and also conspiracy theory”, including claims that Israel “invented the sexual atrocities, rapes against women committed by Hamas on October 7… to justify a so-called genocide”. He added that the same organisation had recently accused Israel of harvesting organs from Palestinian prisoners, which he described as “one of the oldest antisemitic tropes, even from the Middle Ages”.
Chebat said NGO Monitor had repeatedly alerted the European Commission to such statements, but had not seen corrective action. These accusations, he warned, are “exported to the European Union”, taken up by media and “extreme left MEPs”, and “basically… fuel antisemitism”.
He also pointed to long-standing European support for the Palestinian Ministry of Social Development. In the West Bank, he noted, the ministry operates under the Palestinian Authority, but in Gaza it is controlled by Hamas. The Gaza branch, he said, has administered “cash assistance programmes” involving “hundreds of millions of dollars and euros”. In practice, he argued, this raises a strong likelihood that recipients include “members of Hamas, family members of Hamas or organisations that basically are proxies of Hamas and other European-designated terror organisations”.
With a ceasefire and reconstruction discussions advancing, Chebat expects “billions of euro, billions of dollars” to be pledged for Gaza. Humanitarian support is “fine” and “perfect”, he said, acknowledging that Palestinians in the enclave are suffering, but insisted that “we need to make sure that this money is not diverted directly or indirectly by Hamas”. In his view, “we didn’t see any real reform made by the European Union and the European Commission” so far to reduce this risk.
During the interview, EU Today’s Gary Cartwright stressed that “it’s not European Commission money, it’s European taxpayers’ money”, a point Chebat endorsed. “That’s your taxes that are going to fund this,” he said, adding that some of the campaigns financed in part by European grants, such as the recent organ-harvesting claims, have been picked up by major broadcasters and “run as a slick professional operation”.
The discussion in the meeting also addressed the wider information environment. Chebat argued that Hamas and its allies have built an effective propaganda infrastructure, supported by sympathetic NGOs and parts of the media. When large, established organisations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International or Oxfam repeat claims originating from radical actors, he said, they benefit from a “halo effect”: “everyone believes in it because it’s Amnesty International… they have a good reputation.” NGO Monitor’s task, he explained, is “to go to the source of the accusation” and demonstrate when those sources are unreliable, although he acknowledged that the organisation is “facing an industry of billions of dollars”.
On the political side, MEP Cristian Terheș (ECR) set out practical tools available to Parliament, including written questions, coordinated letters and the use of roll-call votes to build a record on sensitive funding files. General complaints about “mismanagement” are less effective, he suggested, than specific dossiers. “When you take one example, one concrete example, and you go with that, you change things,” he said, calling on NGOs to provide tightly focused briefings.
Closing the roundtable, Goodrich stressed that the discussion was directed at funding practices and radicalisation risks rather than at any people as such. “Nobody here is anti-Palestinian,” he said. “We’re pro-Palestinian. We’re anti-radicalisation and extremism.”
A video of EU Today’s interview with Vincent Chebat is available with this article.
