On 7 April 2025, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) published its special report no 11/2025 in which it examined the transparency of EU funding granted to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in EU internal policies.

The ECA highlighted that, in the audited period 2021-2023, over 12,000 NGOs received money from the EU internal policy programmes (e.g., cohesion, research, migration and the environment) amounting to €7.4 billion. Over the past decade, a substantial part of the Commission’s direct funding went to a small number of NGOs. ECA's auditors doubt, however, whether these figures are fully correct as a reliable overview is lacking. The information is published in a fragmented way, which hampers transparency, impedes analysis of whether EU funds are overly concentrated on a small number of NGOs, and restricts insight into the role of NGOs in EU policies. Other shortcomings found are, inter alia:

• Disclosure of information is insufficient, and Member States do not monitor or report on the EU funding granted to NGOs;
• The definition of "NGO" is unclear and varies at the EU and Member State levels; thus it cannot be ensured that NGO's are correctly classified in the EU's financial transparency system. In addition, there are no checks on important aspects of the NGOs' status;
• The Commission did not properly disclose certain EU-funded advocacy activities such as lobbying;
• EU fund managers do not proactively search for potential NGO breaches of EU values, such as the rule of law and human rights, but rely mainly on self-declarations.

Against this background, the ECA recommends that the Commission should do the following:

• Improve guidance on classifying non-governmental organisations;
• Improve the quality of information on EU spending in the financial transparency system;
• Strengthen verification of compliance with EU values.

ECA's special report no 11/2025 was drafted against the background of calls by the European Parliament to strengthen transparency and accountability of EU funding granted to recipients, including NGOs, as a consequence of the 2022 "Qatargate" scandal (→ eucrim 4/2022, 242-243). The present ECA report follows the ECA’s 2018 audit report on EU funding granted to NGOs in external action policy and the 2024 special report on the EU’s transparency register. The ECA states that only minor improvements have been made compared to its 2018 audit.