The Patriots for Europe (PfE) group has successfully collected enough signatures to demand a new inquiry committee in the European Parliament, which would have the power to investigate scandals like Qatargate and institutional abuses at the highest levels of the European Union.
The move “marks a critical step toward investigating deep-rooted corruption, undue influence, and institutional abuses within the EU’s highest ranks,” the PfE said in a press statement.
The ball is now in the court of the EP President Roberta Metsola and the Conference of Presidents (the leaders of each political group) to decide whether to submit the request for a plenary vote—but even if the mainstream parties reject the call, that would be akin to admitting their guilt.
We wrote in detail about the proposed Transparency and Accountability (TRAC) committee when it was first requested by the Patriots weeks ago, and when europeanconservative.com obtained an exclusive copy of the document outlining its role.
According to the plans, TRAC would be comprised of 38 members, proportionally split between the political groups; operate under an initial mandate of 12 months; have the power to summon witnesses, including current and past EU officials; and would have the power to propose legislation at the end of its mandate to fix systemic shortcomings.
Leaders of the national conservative group announced on Tuesday, May 6th, that they had secured the required 176 signatures for TRAC, highlighting the widespread demand for such an initiative for additional democratic oversight across political groups.
“The time has come to expose the serious failures within EU institutions and hold them to the same standards they demand of member states,” said MEP Kinga Gál, the First Vice-Chair of the Patriots. “For too long, they’ve ignored their own ranks while weaponizing the rule of law against democratically elected governments. That must change.”
🚨 | @kingagalMEP: "We've secured the necessary signatures for our initiative to establish the TRAC committee on transparency and accountability. Next step: submission to the Conference of Presidents." #Patriots pic.twitter.com/mp9yImIPGl
— Patriots for Europe (@PatriotsEP) May 6, 2025
Gál also revealed that the Patriots’ fight for transparency has finally yielded results. After weeks of unlawfully rejecting the Patriots’ freedom of information requests, the EU Commission reluctantly handed over “a comprehensive list” of NGO contracts signed in the past few years.
“The numbers are shocking,” Gál said. “Between 2019 and 2023, the Commission signed 37,000 contracts [for financing NGOs], worth a total of €17 billion.” The MEP added that Patriots believe it to be very important to release more details to the public, and that the group will discuss in the coming days how to make the disclosure the most efficient and specific for each member state.
Indeed, the importance of this information cannot be overstated, given that the EU has been making steps to take over the financing of NGOs previously covered by the USAID, in addition to the billions of EU taxpayer funds it has been pouring into the so-called “civil society,” often for explicitly progressive, political causes that undermine the political will of democratically elected governments.
The need to supervise NGO financing, via TRAC and other means, has been made obvious even by the EU Court of Auditors (ECA), which ruled in a bombshell report recently that the EU Commission has been severely violating its own transparency standards for years, deliberately making accountability within existing structures “practically impossible.”
“We owe it to every European citizen to expose corruption and shine a light where secrecy thrives,” explained Dutch MEP Marieke Ehlers (PVV), a key supporter of the initiative. “An inquiry committee in the European Parliament to investigate scandals such as Qatargate and the NGO lobby loop is not just necessary, it’s long overdue.”
However, since the establishment parties in the Parliament’s ruling ‘Ursula coalition’ (EPP, S&D, Renew, and Greens) are among the prime suspects of the largest corruption scandals in recent years—including Qatargate, Huaweigate, and von der Leyen’s still missing Pfizer texts—the Parliament’s mainstream majority will likely reject TRAC if it is submitted to a plenary vote.
That’s not guaranteed to happen either, as the largest groups would probably want to avoid further publicity and could pressure Metsola to block TRAC from going to the plenary in the first place, declaring it inadmissible on the grounds of insufficient suspicion of maladministration that’s needed to set up any inquiry committee.
Still, rejection would be a partial success too, as the harder the EU establishment fights against TRAC, the more obvious it will be to Europeans that Brussels does have something to hide.
It would be a real smoking gun if the EU elite were to reject the democratic oversight of foreign interference, NGO lobbying, and systemic corruption. @PatriotsEP https://t.co/7KhMoGS3Ek
— The European Conservative (@EuroConOfficial) April 10, 2025