'How the EU's Shadow Climate Lobby Works'
Months after the story broke in the Netherlands, German legacy media discovers™ the issue--and reliably falls short of pointing out the bigger issue: the absence of oversight and consequences
A few months ago, Dutch media broke how the EU actually operates:
Environmental NGOS were funded by the EU Commission to create what looks like ‘grassroots support’ for their ‘green™’ ideas (which really are a power grab) and now we have people posting online, e.g., that they like to eat bugs, have become vegan, or participate in ‘direct action’ (climate protests).
For ‘more’ about the story, please venture to the below-linked piece:
Now, with German media noticing™ these breaking news, please keep the following in mind: he who pays the piper calls the tune.
Also: abolish the EU.
The below translation is mine, with emphases and [snark] added.
A Look at the Secret Compacts: How the EU’s Shadow Climate Lobby Works
The EU Commission secretly forged an alliance with NGOs to achieve its goals. In secret contracts, the Commission stipulated how the activists were to torpedo coal power and trade agreements—and paid a lot of money for it. Die Welt provides exclusive insights into these contracts.
By Stefan Beutelsbacher and Axel Bojanowski, Die Welt, 8 June 2025 [source; archived]
On the evening of 7 December 2022, EU Commission officials in Brussels sign a contract that no one is allowed to know about. They promised an environmental organisation called ClientEarth 350,000 euros in funding [note that, according to their ‘About’ section, their funders (data from 2022) include
Our top funders in 2022 were the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), Bloomberg Philanthropies, Postcode Earth Trust, Sequoia Climate Foundation, The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad)—Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI), AKO Foundation, The Tilia Fund, European Climate Foundation (ECF), Arcadia, Grantham Foundation & Trust and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) - Forest Governance, Markets and Climate Programme (FGMC).
[Not too shabby for such a group, esp. as it seems they’re rather on the cheap end of pay-for-play shenanigans…and now back to Die Welt’s reporting™, which notoriously omits that above-related bit of information]. However, they also expect something in return: the activists are to promote the phase-out of coal power in Germany and work together with ‘citizens’ movements’ and ‘climate camps’—in other words, protest groups. This is what it says on page 77 of the document [note that this particular GONGO appeared only a few days ago in this posting on EU-level fraud, corruption, and impunity: turns out that the very same ClientEarth is currently suing the EU Commission over access to official documents: either this is next-level 5D chess or sheer stupidity as the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing (I’m sticking with Occam’s Razor here)].
Just a few months earlier, at the end of September [2024], 40 coal opponents had occupied the Jänschwalde power station in Brandenburg [the federal state surrounding Berlin, Germany]. They chained themselves to rails and conveyor belts and half the plant had to be taken off the grid. The secret contract now shows that EU officials apparently supported such actions—and wanted to incite others [let me spell out what this is: TREASON (which, incidentally, as a term and legal concept, is nowhere to be found in EU Law™: go figure—and now consider the fact that the German gov’t has not come out strongly against these EU-spearheaded shenanigans: shall we do the math on this one together?].
The document can be seen on a computer in a Brussels office. Employees of an EU institution show it to Die Welt, although they are not actually allowed to do so [isn’t the best possible EU of all times awesome? Can you imagine what else may be found on internal™ EU computers that isn’t shown to the public? Perhaps stuff related to, say, the modRNA/Pandemic™-related shitshow known as ‘Pfizergate’ or the nightmare-in-the-making revolving around the EU’s increasingly aggressive push for war vs. Russia! Russia! Russia!]. These documents cannot be printed or searched for terms. And they disappear every 30 minutes and have to be reloaded. This makes reading difficult—probably on purpose [‘probably’? You’ve gotta be kidding—that’s intent, right there].
The Commission under President Ursula von der Leyen is the most powerful authority in Brussels. Outwardly, it preaches transparency and democracy. But behind the scenes, officials paid non-governmental organisations (NGOs [sic]) for years for smear campaigns and lawsuits against companies, including with German taxpayers’ money [dear Germans, it’s safe to assume until proven differently that the EU Commission is also misusing other taxpayers’ money]. They wanted to influence the public and the EU Parliament—sometimes even colleagues in their own organisation.
The EU Commission recently provided NGOs [sic] with annual operating grants totalling 15 million euros, with some receiving up to 700,000 euros. In return, they were supposed to fight what many Brussels officials consider to be evil: fossil fuels, glyphosate, and the Mercosur trade agreement with South America. Joint campaigns were planned down to the last detail. The activists also received funding from foundations, often backed by American donors (see chart) [reproduced below].
All of this happened in the name of the so-called Green Deal. The Commission wants to transform Europe into the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050 [that’s a threat to you and your family, if you’re in Europe]. Many things are to become greener: energy supply, agriculture, industry, transportation, and housing. Although the EU Commission can draw up environmental legislation [it’s secondary legislation, i.e., rule-by-decree] for this, the EU states and the European Parliament have the final say. In order to influence them, MEPs have been saying, albeit silently, for years that the Commission relies on ‘shadow lobbying’.
In principle, NGOs do valuable work, they fight for clean oceans and endangered animals, monitor politics and business, and provide information about abuses. But when activists forge a secret alliance with Brussels officials, things get tricky [also illegal and treasonous]. Then the EU Commission can suddenly push through its goals with undercover helpers.
[As to that chart, in the top-left corner it says ‘great foundations in the US); the right-hand side incl. EU Commission (orig. Europäische Kommission); state financing (orig. staatliche Zuwendungen), and private donors (orig. private Spender); in the bottom-right corner, the following is found: ‘apart from private donations, NGOs rely on large sums from great foundations, member-states, and the EU’]
‘The abbreviation NGO must not be a licence for the arbitrary and uncontrolled use of taxpayers‘ money,’ says the influential CSU MEP Monika Hohlmeier to Die Welt. She had pointed out irregularities early on and initiated a debate. ‘Currently, transparency in the spending of funds and the financial sources of some NGOs is not adequately guaranteed,’ says Hohlmeier.
ClientEarth, for example, undertook contract activism at the request of the Commission against ‘certain coal-fired power plants’. It will challenge official authorisations for emissions and the use of water. The aim is to increase the ‘financial and legal risk for the ownership and operation of the power plants’ [and that’s apparently not a ‘distortion’ of Mr. Market…]. Coal is harmful and burning it accelerates global warming [note the sleight-of-hand presenting this claim as a fact]. Nevertheless, it seems questionable when an EU authority and an NGO plan actions against fossil fuels behind the back of the German government [this is why I labelled this ‘treason’ above].
The situation was similar with the Mercosur customs agreement. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and the Commission’s Directorate-General for Trade are driving it forward. They believe the deal will help the European economy. But the Directorate-General for the Environment had other plans. In 2022, it hired the NGO Friends of the Earth to torpedo Mercosur [isn’t it funny™ that, as per their most recent Financial Statement, that their donors incl. several EU institutions and the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors?]. As a ‘medium-term outcome’, the contract stipulated: ‘The Mercosur agreement will be stopped in its current form.’ The NGO was to point out the ‘harmful consequences for human rights and the environment’. At least ‘three meetings with MEPs’ and ‘two meetings with Commission representatives’, including from DG Trade, the trade department. European officials wanted to influence their colleagues with the help of an NGO and using taxpayers’ money. Friends of the Earth received 700,000 euros [that sum isn’t listed in their Financial Statement, by the way].
All of this has little to do with independent promotion of climate protection. In a report for the EU Parliament back in 2017, CDU politician Markus Pieper denounced ‘intransparent networks’ and called on the Commission to stop supporting NGOs that disregard the EU’s ‘strategic trade and security objectives’. As a result, he faced years of furious attacks from activists.
Even back then, there were already contracts with NGOs ‘whose content also included the targeted exertion of influence on MPs and ministries’, Pieper told Die Welt am Sonntag. This violated the separation of powers. This is because the European executive has exerted influence on the legislature, i.e., on legislation [here I call BS: the EU is constituted in a way in which there is no legislature in the conventional sense of a parliamentary assembly that holds both the power of the purse and is able to initiate legislation; the EU Parliament (sic) has neither authority; instead, the EU Council (assembly of member-states’ gov’ts sets policy aims, which the EU Commission then uses to formulate ‘secondary law’-style decrees, regulations, directives, etc. that must be ‘transposed’ into member-states’ national legislation].
Many NGOs received money precisely for this [which is: the EU Commission pays for the appearance of public™ support for their unaccountable actions]. The Bankwatch association received 422,000 euros, the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) and the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) 700,000 euros each. The Commission always specified exactly what was to be achieved in return [in US legal lingo, that’s what’s called a RICO offence, eh?]. HEAL, for example, was to fight against glyphosate and PFAS, which are persistent artificial substances, some of them toxic [that’s an understatement: PFAS are colloquially known as ‘forever chemicals’ and the EU is currently working towards a blanket ban (they claim; apparently)]. As proof of work, 50 to 80 tweets and meetings with four to six MEPs were expected before votes on chemical regulations.
Green politicians defend all of this: ‘While companies from the tech sector or industry can spend millions on political lobbying, the budgets of NGOs often do not allow for such a presence,’ says MEP Daniel Freund [would you need more evidence of the Greens not being anyone’s friend?]. It is therefore ‘absolutely right that the EU Commission supports certain organisations financially’.
Ursula von der Leyen’s office does not wish to comment on the issue and leaves questions unanswered. Will it monitor NGOs more strictly in future? [huhum, where’s the difference of putting more foxes in charge of the henhouse?] Possibly. One thing is certain: a lot of money will continue to flow to them.
Bottom Lines
Notice anything? Yes, legacy media is reporting™, but they do so months after the fact became more widely known in the neighbouring Netherlands.
And while we get some more particulars, the main issue remains unaddressed: GN/NGO funding is totally intransparent, and while the moral depravity of politicos™ is well-known, what’s never really talked about ‘even’ in relatively EU-critical pieces like the one above is this:
Everybody knows that the EU has a so-called ‘democratic deficit’, yet there is no discussion about the wisdom of using these shady GO/NGOs to further aims that would, quite likely, never pass muster with the electorate and/or the people’s representatives assembled in parliament.
Whatever the flaws and weaknesses of Western-style, so-called ‘liberal democracy’, the constraints ‘our’ system places on the executive (and judicial) branches places are considerable.
What the ‘detour’ via these shady GO/NGOs signifies, then, is a paralegal, if well-entrenched work-around that permits the executive (and judicial) branches to escape oversight while, at the same time, removes them from any personal consequences (as judges are typically also subject to these influences).
This isn’t to say that I’m idolising representative assemblies, most of whose members are similarly beholden to outside influence, such as campaign contributions, the temptations of the so-called revolving doors, and the like. But the authority vested in MPs exists, esp. with respect to subpoena powers and the bully pulpit.
The last thing these shady characters like Von der Leyen and her ilk like is—sunlight, esp. if accompanied by ridicule and satire.
So, have a hefty go at these assholes, ridicule them, and shame them publicly.
If they deserve any attention at-all, it’s this.