Europeans Are Faulted Over Using Funds to Support Like-Minded Voices

During heated wrangling late last year over the size of a new long-term budget for the European Union, Notre Europe, a Paris-based policy group, wanted to make its voice heard. So it put one of its researchers on a small radio station in the French city of Nantes to answer questions and promote its vision of a “more effective” — and bigger — budget controlled by Brussels. The exercise in what appeared to be an energetic public debate had a catch, or two, however.

The radio station, it turns out, received more than $100,000 from Brussels last year, according to official European Union records. Notre Europe itself had received more than $650,000 from Brussels last year, nearly half of its total budget. “The whole thing is surreal make-believe: people who get EU funding talk about how wonderful the E.U. is, and then lobby for it to get more money,” said Mark Littlewood, director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a privately financed research group based in London that is offering $135,000 for the best plan for a British exit from the Union.