EU funding cuts force health NGOs to slash staff
Health NGOs are making staff redundant and leaving Brussels after the European Commission failed to pay out expected grants, leaving some without most of their funding for the rest of the year.
Get in!
The European Public Health Association (EUPHA), based in Utrecht, the Netherlands, said it would file a complaint to the European ombudsman over the missing grants, which forced it to close its Brussels office and make its head of advocacy in the Belgian capital redundant in June.
“It’s a huge issue when the Commission agrees to fund us, sign [agreements] with us, but withholds it without explanation. Not only it betrays trust, it also probably breaches its own legal obligations,” said Charlotte Marchandise, executive director of EUPHA.
EUPHA is one of 30 health NGOs that signed agreements with the European Commission outlining their planned activities last year, in anticipation of operating grants for the following financial year. Operating grants go toward daily overhead costs like staff salaries and without which many NGOs say they cannot survive.
They're not really NGOs then, are they?
The call to apply for those grants never arrived, however, while Commission officials have informally told NGOs to expect no funding.
Other health NGOs have had to take similarly dramatic cost-cutting measures after learning no grants from the Commission would arrive this year. Last week, the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA), one of the biggest health NGO networks in Brussels, confirmed it would cut five of its 13 staff.
Haha! YES!!
Incredibly, it gets even better...
The European Alcohol Policy Alliance (Eurocare) is also in danger of losing two of its four staff, Anamaria Suciu, policy and advocacy manager, told POLITICO. The Commission’s operating grant typically accounts for 60 percent of Eurocare’s funding in a given year, she said.
Brussels is an increasingly inhospitable environment for NGOs since the European election last year.
Under a right-wing majority led by the European People’s Party, lawmakers such as the European People’s Party’s Dirk Gotink — appointed to head a probe into NGO funding on Wednesday — claim NGOs have used European money to “shadow lobby” for green policies. A POLITICO fact-check found little evidence for shadowy lobbying, however. EU funding is publicly disclosed and allows NGOs to counter the lobbying activities of better-resourced private interests.