A taxpayers group with close ties to the European People’s Party (EPP) coordinated with Austria’s far-right in the latest escalation of the NGO funding debate, DeSmog can reveal.

The Taxpayers Association of Europe (TAE) filed a criminal complaint with the EU’s top prosecutor on July 23, alleging that two former commissioners behind the EU Green Deal — Frans Timmermans and Virginius Sinkevicius — made “illegal” payments to NGOs to lobby over EU laws. There is no evidence to suggest this is the case. 

Austria’s far-right party Freedom Party (FPÖ) — which has pushed to weaken multiple climate measures in the country — filed a separate complaint with the public prosecutor a day later.

Neither of the press releases issued by the TAE and the FPÖ made any mention of a collaboration. However, DeSmog has found that the TAE  — which shares an office and personnel with an EPP lobby group — consulted the FPÖ’s Roman Haider, before a similar complaint was also sent from his party. The Austrian MEP has repeatedly denied climate science, posting on Instagram in July, “the climate Taliban still believe that the earth is boiling away”.

In an interview with DeSmog, TAE President Michael Jäger said that he had approached Haider and had received his support for the plans, before submitting “similar but independent” complaints to prosecutors. “We are intellectual brothers on the topic,” he added. 

Haider posted about the “collaboration” (Zusammenarbeit) with TAE on his Facebook and Instagram accounts, alongside the hashtags “#stopgreendeal”, “#stopclimatemadness” and “#stopleftwingwoke”.

DeSmog also learnt that the TAE discussed plans for the complaint with EPP MEP Monika Hohlmeier. Hohlmeier, a German MEP at the forefront of the anti-NGO funding backlash in Brussels, provided the group with “relevant materials” such as press statements and news reports, Jäger said.  

Hohlmeier is currently vice-chair of the European Parliament’s committee on budgetary control, which is home to a scrutiny group on NGO financing created by parliament in June. “Members of the Committee receive many requests on a wide range of issues,” Hohlmeier told DeSmog via email. “They speak to all parties and do not give preferential treatment.” She did not respond to questions about the nature of her discussion with TAE.

“This is about a fundamental principle of democracy. It also has nothing to do with party affiliation,” Jäger told DeSmog. “We have not received any additional or internal information from the European Parliament or MEPs; everything was and is publicly available.”

Haider told DeSmog via email, “While it is true that the TAE and the FPÖ share the goal of promoting the efficient use of taxpayers’ money, we do not have an ongoing cooperation.”

He added, “‘Climate denial’” is a term I firmly reject. The climate has experienced various fluctuations, and we are adapting. […] controlling every aspect of our citizens’ lives […] would merely introduce a greenish variant of socialism.”

The criminal complaints were filed in Luxemburg, Munich and Vienna. They follow months of unsubstantiated allegations from right-wing groups, claiming that the European Commission signed “secret contracts” with NGOs that directed them to lobby in favour of the Green Deal, the EU’s plan to reach net zero by 2050. These allegations were led by the EPP, alongside hard- and far-right political groupings, such as the Patriots for Europe, which counts Austria’s FPÖ among its members.

“We are witnessing an escalation of the smear campaign against civil society,” said Daniel Freund MEP, a member of the Greens party in the European Parliament. “The far right and conservatives are closing ranks here.”

“Not a shred of evidence has been provided to support these claims, which have now been debunked numerous times, including by the Commission itself,” said Nick Aiossa, director of watchdog Transparency International EU. 

“This frivolous complaint is part of a far-right and EPP campaign designed to discredit and defund civil society actors who are opposing the increasingly regressive climate policies.” 

‘Neutral and Independent’

The Brussels-based Taxpayers Association of Europe is described on its website as “neutral and independent”, “born out of citizens’ desire to protect themselves from the state’s increasing tax demands”.

Only two MEPs have registered official meetings with the TAE since 2019, according to EU lobbying records. However, DeSmog found that the group is closely tied to the EPP.

The group shares an office building with the EPP’s advocacy arm SME Europe, and its general secretary Horst Heitz also works as the executive director for SME Europe. 

SME Europe’s board is made up entirely of EPP members, including nine current and six former MEPs. SME Europe and TAE share an address at 46 Rue d’Arlon in Brussels.

The address is also home to German lobby organisation Europäischer Wirtschaftssenat (European Economic Senate, EWS), which was founded by TAE alongside its German member, the Bavarian Taxpayers Association. Its Brussels office manager is TAE’s Horst Heitz.

Though EWS claims to be “free from ideological or political constraints”, it is led by former EPP MEP Ingo Friedrich, who still sits on the board for the political party.  The organisation supports its so-called ‘economic senators’ — including staff from the tobacco company Philip Morris, car company Audi, and the German energy supplier e.optimum — to “make their knowledge, skills and experience available to political decision-makers”. 

EWS and TAE also share offices in Munich, Germany, where one of the four criminal complaints was recently filed. 

All three German members of TAE’s eight-person board of directors have current or former ties to the country’s centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU), and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, including TAE’S President. Michael Jäger has been a board member for the local CSU group in Neubiberg since 2021, and was formerly deputy chairman for the group. 

CDU/CSU is considered to be the most powerful arm of the EPP political grouping, and has led the charge against NGO funding in recent years, which has reached fever pitch in the EU in recent months backed by politicians including Monika Hohlmeier. 

“That TAE has picked up on what the CDU/CSU has been pursuing politically for years is hardly surprising, given the spatial and personal proximity between the organizations,” Daniel Freund from the Greens said.

Olivier Hoedeman from pro-transparency pressure group Corporate Europe Observatory criticised the EPP and CDU politician Hohlmeier for her reported discussion with TAE over the complaint. “[TAE’s efforts] to initiate a criminal investigation against politicians on a completely flimsy basis is nasty, aggressive, Trumpian politics.”

“For the largest political group in the European Parliament to be implicated in this, at a time where democracy is under attack from the far right, is scandalous and irresponsible,” he said.

In an interview with DeSmog, Jäger denied there were any formal ties between TAE and EPP.

“We have for sure an exchange with EPP,” he said. “We’ll exchange with any group, including political groups, and we are happy if anyone supports our campaign for spending control.”

Jäger told DeSmog that the links to the EPP and corporations were “not relevant” to the complaint and that the organisation received “no funding” from these groups and worked with multiple different parties. He said that TAE had move into the office with the other organisations to reduce spending. 

Lack of Evidence

While all parties agree that organisations conducting advocacy work and lobbying parliament receive funding through the European Commission, the debate around NGO funding centres on whether the Commission itself has directed lobbying work — an allegation it has repeatedly denied.

NGOs receive funding from the EU through grants such as the LIFE programme, which supports environmental work. Until last November, when the Commission issued new guidance, applications could include lobbying and advocacy, with the funding seen as a way to balance the spending power of corporate lobbies in the EU.

Some EPP politicians maintain that the agreements resulting from these grants could be considered “instructions” from the Commission to lobby. However, the Commission itself has repeatedly stated that any activities performed under the grants were the responsibility of the NGOs, which drafted their own work plans.

In April, the European Court of Auditors issued a report, which found that the Commission was not transparently reporting on its funding of NGOs, but raised no concerns about the legality of the EU funding for NGO advocacy work. An analysis of 28 funding contracts by Politico in February likewise found no evidence that grant agreements with NGOs included direct instructions for them to lobby EU institutions. 

The European Commission provides grants to corporations, consultancies and other organisations, as well as not for profit groups and has said that — despite recent focus on NGOs, particularly environmental groups — transparency concerns would apply to all beneficiaries, including industry.