Nice Work . . . If You Can Get It? Friends of the Earth Does.

The International Policy Network (IPN) is a research organization based in the United Kingdom. On their “About” page they list their mission as to:

Promote the advancement of learning by research into economic and political science and the publication of such research.

Last month, March 2010, they published such research in a report titled “Friends of the EU: The Costs of a Taxpayer-Funded Green Lobby.” In the Executive Summary of this report, IPN states:

Environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have enormous influence in the European Union. However, some of the most vocal green groups are actually funded directly by the EU to lobby it.

Nice work, if you can get it? Absolutely. And it seems that in Europe they can. One of the beneficiaries of such governmental largess is Friends of the Earth Europe (FoEE). On page 8 of the IPN report, in Table 2: Sources of Funding and Lobbying Expenditures, IPN shows that for 2008, FoEE had income of approximately €1.5 million. Of that amount, over 50%, or €790,000, came in the form of a grant from DG ENVI, which stands for Directorate General Environmental, the environmental commission of the European Union. And during that same year, FoEE reported to the EU that FoEE spent €696,000 to lobby the government of the European Union.

Indeed, nice work, if you can get it. And it’s looks like Friends of the Earth doesn’t have too much trouble in doing so.

Implications?

Generally, this means that the taxpayers of the European Union pay advocacy groups to lobby their government for changes deemed important by the advocacy group, and not necessarily the taxpayers.

Specifically, as related to the theme of this blog, this “nice work” means that European companies pay, via their taxes, for NGOs to campaign against them. And with, essentially, all the lobbying budget of FoEE picked up by the taxpayers of Europe, this leaves plenty of revenue left over for FoEE, and other lucky European NGOs, to apply to their online protest campaigns. Theoretically, at least, this means that FoEE’s digital activism is taxpayer supported.

This is an important tidbit of information to keep in mind for the next time that NGOs complain about governmental tax breaks for certain corporations.