The European Commission’s €1.8 trillion budget proposal for 2028-2034, while not announcing explicit cuts to civil society, has sparked deep concern among NGOs and watchdogs. They warn that the threat is not one of a sudden slash, but of a slow, structural defunding cleverly disguised as bureaucratic simplification. By reorganizing the EU budget from 52 programmes down to just 16, and by funneling vast sums for cohesion, social, and agricultural policy through new national partnership plans, the design inherently risks sidelining civil society. The protected budgetary headings are clearly defence, competitiveness, and the green and digital transitions; support for democracy and civic resilience is not among them. As Eulàlia Rubio of the Jacques Delors Institute notes, this reflects a union grappling with internal fragmentation and shifting priorities, where civil society has “no big defenders among member states” to shield it from subtle erosion.
The Commission points to its new AgoraEU programme—an €8.58 billion fusion of previous civic and cultural funds—as a flagship of its commitment. While nominally larger, this programme contains a critical and alarming omission: its draft regulation fails to explicitly mandate operating grants. These multi-year, core funding streams are the lifeblood of NGOs, allowing them to pay staff, keep lights on, and engage in essential long-term advocacy, watchdog activities, and strategic litigation without being shackled to short-term projects. Without a legal guarantee, future administrators could simply delete this funding line. A dangerous precedent is already set: in 2025, the Commission discontinued operating grants for health NGOs, shifting to project-only funding—a move organizations are challenging but fear is a template for the wider budget. The European Parliament is pushing back, advocating a 25% larger fund with explicit protections, backed by over 500 organizations.
The structural risk is magnified by the proposal to route social spending through member states. The social policy earmark drops from a dedicated 25% under the current European Social Fund Plus to a vague 14% target applied across broader national plans. For NGOs operating in countries like Hungary or Slovakia, where governments are often hostile to groups defending rule of law, minority rights, or asylum seekers, this change is existential. It means the difference between accessing EU funds directly via Brussels—a channel that can bypass obstructive governments—and having to apply through the very national authorities that may seek to stifle their work. This recentralization fundamentally alters the protective role the EU budget can play for civil society under pressure.
This shift in philosophy is not without its academic defenders. Economists like Zsolt Darvas of Bruegel argue that supporting NGOs is inherently a national competency, given that member states control nearly half of the bloc’s economic output compared to the EU’s 1%. The EU budget, he contends, should focus only on what member states cannot do alone, like major infrastructure or cross-border research. This logic, however, rests on a perilous assumption: that all national governments will willingly use their fiscal power to nourish an independent, critical civil society. Evidence from across the Union starkly contradicts this. The very existence of a new parliamentary “Scrutiny Working Group”—driven by right-wing parties and boycotted by the left and centre—investigating NGO funding, despite auditors finding no financial wrongdoing, reveals a politicized environment where civil society itself is under suspicion.
The stakes could not be higher. The climate for civic action is demonstrably deteriorating. The EU’s own Fundamental Rights Agency reported in 2026 that 75% of civil society organizations face barriers to their work. The global monitor CIVICUS downgraded civic space in major democracies like France, Germany, and Italy to “obstructed” in 2025. In this context, the EU budget is more than an accounting exercise; it is a statement of values and a vital tool for resilience. As Rubio warns, the EU must be strategically excellent at supporting groups in countries where the rule of law is under harm, not retreat into a dangerous logic of scrutinizing who are the “good” or “bad” recipients of aid.
Ultimately, this budget proposal is an opening bid in a negotiation that will last years. But its initial architecture—fewer dedicated funding lines, weaker earmarks, the omission of operating grants, and the pivot to national control—already loads the dice against a vibrant, independent civil society. It represents a slow-burn risk, transferring vulnerability onto the organizations that act as the Union’s social conscience, its watchdog, and often its most credible link to marginalized citizens. The coming debate will reveal whether the European project still sees a robust civic sphere as a non-negotiable pillar of democracy, or merely as a discretionary cost in an age of geopolitical and economic hardening.
