Today the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency published its report examining mounting restrictions facing pro-rights and democracy activists in Europe. The study reiterates the findings of Liberties' own paper, published in September, that rights groups across the EU face four problems. While Hungary and Poland may be the worst offenders, issues can be found throughout Europe. First, smear campaigns and bogus state investigations designed to discredit and intimidate non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Second, cuts in public funding and attempts to cut off funding from philanthropists (the latter of which helps rights groups stay independent of governments). Third, excessive bureaucratic burdens designed to keep activists busy with administrative chores instead of being able to do their job. Fourth, governments shutting NGOs out of law and policy making where before there was consultation and cooperation.
NGOs are misunderstood and unappreciated
The agency's report is a positive and important development because it gives official EU recognition to restrictions facing activists across Europe. Unfortunately, there is little guarantee that this will translate into action by Brussels. Except for briefly waking up to the problem when the Hungarian government adopted a Russian-style anti-NGO law, the European Commission and European Parliament have been largely uninterested in pleas from activists to protect rights groups. Among members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in particular, NGOs working to protect civil liberties, the rule of law, democratic standards, environmental protection and fighting corruption are misunderstood as agents of the political left. Twice in the European Parliament recently, the centre-right EPP group (the largest political bloc) attempted to push through resolutions that could block EU funding for such organisations, and portray them as threats to the democratic process. Attempts by concerned MEPs to get a debate about the increasingly hostile environment facing NGOs in the EU onto the parliament's agenda have been shot down repeatedly by the Socialists and Democrats centre-left and the EPP centre-right groups.
The fact is that NGOs dealing with these topics are essential for democracy to work properly. First, they keep citizens informed about what politicians are doing and explain complicated legal and policy questions. This allows the public to follow and take part in democratic life. Second, NGOs work in the public interest to persuade governments to uphold existing national, European and international legal standards on corruption, environmental protection, civil liberties, rule of law and democracy. This work ensures that the broad democratic will of the people is upheld in the face of short-term party political or commercial interests.
Because of the role NGOs play in protecting these values, they have found themselves attacked by politicians with authoritarian tendencies. Measures to stifle NGOs are often part of broader efforts by far right politicians to silence critics which include taking over the courts and restricting media freedom.
Better recommendations needed
The agency's report makes a number of recommendations. Significantly, the paper takes up the suggestion, first put forward by Liberties in 2016, that the EU should create a new fund to support NGOs working to promote the European values of rights, democracy and the rule of law. Currently, the EU supports NGOs outside the Union to carry out this work with hundreds of millions of euros. But the biggest single source of funding for NGOs working on rights and democracy inside the EU is the Norwegian government. That's an essential lifeline for activists, but it's embarrassing for the Union to leave it almost entirely up to an ally to uphold European values.
The report fails to include other recommendations that could help to improve the situation, such as two suggestions recently made by Liberties. First, that the EU should create new legislation that would allow groups being harassed by governments to register themselves as an EU association to escape ill-intentioned restrictions imposed by national law. This is entirely within the EU’s powers since it was already proposed by the Commission in the 1990s but was dropped due to a lack of interest among governments. A second recommendation put forward by Liberties is that the EU should appoint a high-level figure responsible for keeping track of attacks against NGOs and opening diplomatic channels with governments where these occur. The EU has already created similar bodies to cover media freedom and incidents of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
Will the report lead to action?
Signs from the Commission are that even though the problems are now described clearly by an EU body, it wants to delay action and ask for more research. That could prove to be a costly mistake. As discussed by this author elsewhere, the EU is struggling to find the political will to pressure governments like Hungary and Poland to desist from or reverse retrogressive laws that destroy the independence of the courts and the media. One of the reasons that these governments have been able to push through their measures is that they have been able to dupe large sections of the public into believing that giving up their rights is a good idea. If the EU wants Europeans to understand how valuable rights, democracy and the rule of law are, and to push back against retrogressive governments, it needs to copy the policies it has towards countries outside the EU. Namely, the EU should protect and fund NGOs that promote public support for European values.
