Euroskeptic think tanks on the rise as Brussels slashes funding for pro-EU groups

BRUSSELS ― The European Commission cut millions of euros of funding from established pro-EU think tanks ― just as more Euroskeptic groups have been gaining ground.

European think tanks say they’re having to scale back their activities or lay off staff since the Commission scrapped a large chunk of their funding last year; the funding shortfall amounts to €7.8 million, according to French news outlet L’Informé.

The funding cut came months after conservative organizations, including Hungary’s MCC Brussels, complained that cash was being spent on “EU propaganda” that went only to groups that promoted the bloc’s “vision of deeper European integration.”

While pro-EU groups have seen their cash cut, right-wing think tanks in Brussels have gained in prominence and funding, the latter often provided by backers in the U.S.

“The whole think tank situation might shift towards anti-European,” Green MEP Daniel Freund said. “The EU needs to defend itself against those seeking to destroy it. We cannot simply welcome hostile organizations, be they Russian, Hungarian, or American, while defunding an important part of the sensible, science-based, democratic organizations.”

Long-standing support

The Commission gives out money to think tanks through its Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) Programme, which it describes as helping to “protect and promote rights and values as enshrined in the EU Treaties and the Charter of Fundamental Rights.”

That funding — and cash from CERV’s predecessors — has gone towards organizations that put on events, commission reports, and pay for research examining European affairs and integration. Often, although not exclusively, CERV’s beneficiaries will have been groups with a pro-European stance.

The Commission slashed the cash when it became “politically more difficult to justify the funding” to pro-EU organizations, said Fabian Zuleeg, chief executive of the European Policy Center, a not-for-profit organization that says it is “dedicated to fostering European integration through analysis and debate.”

“It seems to be a bit of a coincidence,” he said. EPC is one of the organizations that didn’t get its funding renewed.

European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier did not address POLITICO’s question about whether the decision not to renew funding for many groups was due to political pressure, but said that the process is “highly competitive, and all proposals are evaluated on the basis of the award criteria set out in the call for proposals.” He said that of 203 applicants who applied for funding in 2025, 70 were “retained,” adding that “an unsuccessful application under a specific call does not exclude applicants from accessing EU funding.”

Organizations apply for funding every three years. Many of the affected think tanks, which use the cash to pay for day-to-day costs such as staff salaries, received CERV funding for several years before 2025.

They include Paris’ Jacques Delors Institute, founded by the former president of the European Commission, which had received €350,000 a year, and the European People’s Party-aligned Robert Schuman Foundation, which has previously received €400,000 per year, according to L’Informeé.

President and Chief Executive of the European Policy Center Fabian Zuleeg attends a panel discussion on Prospects for Peace in Ukraine during the Doha Forum in the Qatari capital in December 2023. | Salim Matramkot/AFP via Getty Images

Paid to be pro-EU

The funding cut followed accusations from right-leaning groups that many organizations that received money were being “bought by the Commission to be pro-European,” the EPC’s Zuleeg said.

“Whatever the reason why [the funding cut] has happened, it gives entirely the wrong signal,” he said.

Zuleeg contrasted the financial fortunes of these older groups and the brand of newer, more Euroskeptic or right-leaning think tanks that have started to gain a foothold in the Brussels debate and events scene. 

Among the most prominent is MCC Brussels, a think tank funded by a private educational institute in Hungary with close ties to the government of Viktor Orbán, which arrived in the city in 2022 and regularly hosts events critical of the EU and liberal policies. It has been particularly active in the run-up to Sunday’s Hungarian election.

In February 2025, a few months before the Commission slashed the funding, MCC accused the EU of using programs such as CERV to help organizations that are “explicitly aligned with the Commission’s vision of deeper European integration.”

“Far from fostering genuine civic engagement, this strategy constitutes a systematic effort to consolidate pro-EU narratives while marginalising dissenting voices,” MCC Brussels argued at the time. 

There has been a rise of anti-EU voices in Brussels of late. In 2024, the nationalist-right conference NatCon came to Brussels for the first time (although a local mayor attempted to close it down). And earlier this year, U.S. State Department officials held talks with representatives of MAGA-aligned think tanks in Europe about the potential for U.S government funding. 

MCC Brussels’ comms chief John O’Brien said that when the civil society and think tank space “has been so heavily shaped by European Commission funding … the emergence of alternative funding sources for organizations focused on free speech, national sovereignty, and national identity is a natural development.”

But he added that there’s a “double standard” regarding perception of funding from the U.S.

“There was little concern from the European Commission or affiliated organizations and think tanks when progressive NGOs in Europe received substantial support from the United States (including via USAID and other programs),” he said. “Only now, when funding may reach their political opponents, is it being framed as ‘foreign interference.’”

Broader cuts

Zuleeg, the EPC chief, said the non-renewal of the CERV money, which amounts to around €250,000 per year, would mean the organization cuts back on work related to topics such as democracy and citizens’ participation.

And while he made a distinction between think tanks, which organize events or commission research, and NGOs, which do the same but tend to advocate for a specific cause, Zuleeg said that the CERV grant cut “does also reflect in part, the controversy around funding going to advocacy organizations.”

Flags from the 27 countries of the EU in front of the European Parliament in Brussels in April 2025. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images

That’s a reference to increased scrutiny from the same right-wing groups, as well as conservative politicians, into Commission cash for NGOs; in 2025, a European Parliament body was set up specifically to probe NGO funding.

Some sectors saw even stronger targeted action. Operating grants for health-focused NGOs, overseen by EU Health Commissioner (and Orban ally) Olivér Várhelyi, were scrapped entirely last year.

Fabienne Keller, a French MEP with the centrist Renew group who is also a board member of the Jacques Delors Institute, wrote to the Commission alongside the EPP’s Željana Zovko to ask the EU executive to reinstate 2026’s CERV funding.

“I regret that our warnings to the European Commission have not succeeded in securing financial support for think tanks that work throughout the year to highlight European public policies and promote European values,” Keller told POLITICO in a text.

But she stopped short of saying the move was politically motivated. Other think tanks that have lost their funding also dispute the extent to which the Commission’s move was influenced by conservative attacks. 

Friends of Europe is an established Brussels-based think tank that says on its website that “at our core, we embrace European values and freedoms.”

Its president, Isabelle Durant, said she at first had suspected “a political decision, linked to pressure from the far right” was behind the funding cut.

“But in fact, no,” she told L’Informé. “It seems to be more of a bureaucratic problem: the Commission, as is often the case, called upon external experts to evaluate the applications.”

Martin Vokálek, executive director at the Brussels office of the Czech think tank Europeum Institute for European Policy, said that the funding scrutiny the Commission faces comes from all sides. 

“They are definitely sensing the pressure from this kind of more liberal and very value-oriented members of the Parliament, who would be saying that ‘you must support the union values.'” 

But he added that there’s also a group of more conservative politicians saying money “shouldn’t be going to ‘green’ organizations, ‘activist organizations,’ and so on and so on.”

“So this kind of debate is very, very politicized,” he said, adding: “It’s impacted by strong narratives from both sides, this kind of culture war.”