With President Trump’s new administration combing through public spending and finding many questionable uses of taxpayers’ money, in particular on payments made by the aid agency USAID, European experts have been digging through spending by Brussels.

That came while a debate was still ongoing on how the European Commission secretly gave money to NGOs to promote its “green agenda”.

On February 6, Sander Smit and Alexander Bernhuber, both MEPs from the European People’s Party (EPP), sent a letter to the commission, demanding full transparency regarding what they called the “lobby scandal with Green NGOs”.

Recent reporting has shown there were allegedly secret contracts between the commission and Green NGOs, where Brussels used money from a billion-euro climate and environmental subsidy fund for its shadow lobbying activities.