The idea of a European Union Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to clean up the waste and fraud that goes on with EU taxpayer money is slowly spreading in Europe, but more than overdue. Most Europeans are completely unaware of the madness of EU spending on useless, batty projects, including NGOs that have turned out to be a way for many of the EU's "elites" to receive nice kickbacks.
In February 2025, MCC Brussels, a European think-tank, published a bombshell report, "The EU's Propaganda Machine: How the EU funds NGOs to promote itself." The report shows how the European Commission – the unelected executive branch of the European Union – is using taxpayer money "to promote its political agenda under the guise of advancing 'EU values'." In short, the EU is funding NGOs and think-tanks to spread its own propaganda:
"This 'propaganda by proxy' is fundamentally undemocratic. In effect, many EU citizens who are opposed to 'more Europe' as the answer to every problem are funding the promotion of greater federalism. More conservative voters and countries, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, are facing EU- funded promotion of liberal-progressive values they do not share. Elected national governments are coming under attack from groups funded by Brussels."
A few months later, in April 2025, the European Court of Auditors concluded that the EU's funding of NGOs is a complete and utter mess. The auditors stated: "Obtaining reliable information on all EU funds NGOs have received is practically impossible."
MCC Brussels wrote:
"Out of over 4,400 NGOs funded between 2014 and 2023, just 30 organisations received more than €3.3 billion—over 40% of the total. The EU's much-vaunted pluralism looks more like a cartel."
Frank Furedi, Executive Director of MCC Brussels, said of the report:
"The systemic opacity revealed by the European Court of Auditors is yet another indication of how power and resources are monopolised by a few favored players, all while the general public remains kept in the dark. This report shows that the EU's supposed commitment to transparency and accountability is nothing more than a facade."
Investigative journalist Peter Schweizer commented on the EU's NGO scandal in February 2025:
"These bureaucracies are funding NGOs not, you know, to feed hungry people or to advance a broadly agreed upon social agenda. It's to protect their own interests and to feather their own nests. And that's where it should begin, just like the DOGE investigation in the United States, but in Europe they're going to face the same kind of resistance...
The problem has always been that, you know, people want to think that the problem of corruption in government is a function of outside businesses or outside interests that are sort of corrupting these fair-minded government officials. It's kind of this bribery model that we saw in the classic Jimmy Stewart movie 'Mr. Smith goes to Washington.' The reality is otherwise. It's more like an extortion model, it's more like the mafia, when the mafia shows up at a corner grocery store in urban America and says 'hey you might want to take out insurance with us, because if you don't, your shop might actually burn down.' Well, in this scenario, that's the government, and government officials in the United States and also in Europe threaten and pressure corporations, you know, people who do not share their political views, and extort them for money or for silence..."
The EU, according to Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, secretly paid environmental NGOs to lobby members of the European Parliament to pass the European Commission's "European Green Deal," the mad plan which promises to make the EU get to "net zero" by 2050. In other words, the taxpayers' money were lavished by the European Commission to subsidize green political lobbying to bring about what the EU wanted. This included spending €700,000 on NGOs to have them "influence" European farming in a "green" direction.
"Organisations were assigned goals to achieve specific lobbying results with both MEPs and member states, aiming to promote a more ambitious green policy agenda," De Telegraaf alleged in January 2025.
The list goes on: The European Commission has funded the celebration of post-nationalism, the promotion of transgenderism, "diversity and inclusion" and every other woke plan under the sun.
That is just the NGOs. The European Commission also funds an unknown number of other projects. Perhaps the most notable among them, given the enormous amounts of money diverted to it, is the funding of the terrorist entities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The EU routinely boasts of being the largest provider of foreign aid to the Palestinians, although it is highly unclear how this, in any way, is in the interest of Europe's taxpayers.
In December 2023, just months after the October 7 massacre by Hamas of 1,200 innocent people in Israel, the EU boasted:
"The European Union is the biggest provider of external assistance to the Palestinians which amounts to indicatively almost €1.2 billion for 2021-2024 under the European Joint Strategy, of which €809.4 million have already been adopted."
The European Union and its antecedent organizations (the EEC and EC) -- have been funding the Palestinians since the 1970s at an ever-increasing rate. Since 2008, the funding has been at around 1.2 billion euros per year. Much of this money has been funneled through UNRWA, the UN "refugee" organization for Palestinians that has become associated with Hamas.
Then there are all the cases of foreign influence operations in the EU involving Qatar, and China's Huawei, as well as the corruption scandal involving Pfizer. There is the extreme lack of transparency within the European Union and its severely undemocratic decision-making processes, lack of transparency and lack of a mechanism for walking away.
In April, a group of Members of European Parliament, known as Patriots for Europe, inspired by the US, actually proposed a DOGE for Europe. The initiative, however, also known as TRAC (Transparency, Responsibility, and Anti-Corruption), is facing staunch opposition from the mainstream parties in the European Parliament. Maybe they have a lot to hide?
Robert Williams is based in the United States.
