MIL-OSI Europe: Answer to a written question – European Court of Auditors’ Special Report 11/2025: consequences of unduly paying grants to organisations wrongly categorised as NGOs – E-002046/2025(ASW)

The Commission refers to its replies to the European Court of Auditor’s (ECA) Special Report 11/2025, relating to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in internal policies[1].

As acknowledged by the ECA[2], the co-legislators only agreed on the introduction of a definition of an NGO in the Financial Regulation in September 2024[3], while the audit scope covered funding for EU internal policies for the 2021-2023 period.

In the light of the 2025 recommendations of the ECA, the Commission will explore whether this recent definition of an NGO should and could be further clarified.

Any clarification should be proportionate, given there is no indication that the NGO status poses a higher risk for the EU budget, compared to other types of entities.

When it comes to receiving EU funding, NGOs are no different from other applicants. They are subject to fulfilling the necessary eligibility requirements and having an NGO status does not entail any preferential treatment, nor is it an eligibility criterion in itself, aside from a few very specific cases.

Therefore, having or not the status of an NGO is in principle not relevant for receiving EU funding.

• [1] https://www.eca.europa.eu/Lists/ECAReplies/COM-Replies-SR-2025-11/COM-Replies-SR-2025-11_EN.pdf.
• [2] https://www.eca.europa.eu/lists/ecadocuments/annualreport-performance-2021/annualreport-performance-2021_en.pdf p. 162, and https://www.eca.europa.eu/ECAPublications/SR-2025-11/SR-2025-11_EN.pdf paragraph 5.
• [3] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:L_202402509.