19/05/2026
A new report from the European Civic Forum suggests that Brussels is no longer exporting democracy, but in some crucial respects is exporting the tools to dismantle it.
Benjamin Goodwin and Aarti Narsee’s piece for EU Observer maps national-level restrictions on civil society, which are shaping the narrative in Brussels, while EU-level measures provide political and legal cover for crackdowns back home. This is precisely the playbook Prof. Alberto Alemanno warned of in How NGOs die – fabricate a scandal, delegitimise, defund, then criminalise – except now the EU’s own institutions are an active node in the circuit, not merely a bystander.
A parliamentary platform turned smear machine
The clearest exhibit is the European Parliament’s “scrutiny working group” on NGO financing. Despite the European Court of Auditors finding no evidence of grant misuse, the group has manufactured suspicion against climate NGOs, branded Muslim-led organisations as “terrorist-adjacent,” and accused migration-rights groups of facilitating “illegal smuggling.” As we warned last November, this body was never about oversight – it was about lending parliamentary legitimacy to a politically-motivated smear campaign.
The transnational feedback is now impossible to ignore. The same MEPs on the working group are driving parallel attacks at home: CDU/CSU launching “political neutrality” inquiries in Germany, the FPÖ targeting 700+ organisations in Austria, Bulgaria establishing a commission against groups funded by “foreign philanthropists”, and citing the Commission’s own foreign funding directive as their blueprint. The report documents this pattern across at least five countries – Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, and Slovakia – making clear this is not a series of isolated national incidents but a coordinated, continent-wide trend.
The manufactured scandal is only one part of the picture. The report also documents a parallel squeeze on NGO funding: public authorities across Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, France, Hungary, Spain, and the UK are increasingly conditioning or withdrawing funding from organisations engaged in advocacy – particularly when they criticise government policy. The effect is a chilling one: NGOs feel forced to tone down their messages, reduce their public positions, or go quiet altogether. Delegitimisation and defunding are working in tandem.
Goodwin and Narsee put it plainly: civic space is not simply “shrinking.” It is being actively shrunk by identifiable actors pursuing identifiable goals. That distinction matters. It demands a political response – naming actors, exposing mechanisms, and holding institutions accountable for the cover they provide. The report identifies eight structural trends driving this deterioration – from the spread of “foreign agents” rhetoric and legislation, to the criminalisation of solidarity with migrants, to the expansion of government surveillance of civic actors, to the systematic sidelining of civil society from EU policy consultations. Together, they amount to a sustained, multi-front assault on the conditions that make democratic participation possible.
The EU cannot have it both ways
The EU cannot credibly champion democracy abroad while its Parliament smears NGOs without evidence and its directives are weaponised in Sofia and Vienna. The Commission’s civil society strategy and the Parliament’s recent vote to increase democracy funding are welcome, but they ring hollow alongside the machinery operating in the same building. Notably, the report also documents civil society pushing back: through strategic litigation, sustained mobilisation, and advocacy, organisations across Europe have secured measurable wins even in the face of escalating repression. The question is how long that resilience can hold without meaningful institutional support.
The playbook is in operation. The question is whether Europe’s democratic institutions will disrupt it, or continue to enable it.