Trouble starts when the centrist parties begin to sound alike. When moderate left and moderate right converge into a governing centre, voters lose real choice within the system. When democracy loses its internal opposition, it begins producing external opposition. This is the consensus trap.
Rightwing groups in the European Parliament have extended for six months a controversial committee investigating NGOs that receive EU funding.
Tuesday’s (5 May) vote in the European Parliament’s development committee was a political containment exercise. The cordon sanitaire held, but the compromise should not be mistaken for a complete victory on substance. One of the key debates during the negotiations of the report concerned conditionality — specifically, whether development aid should depend on third countries’ cooperation on returns and readmission.
Why do some centre-right European People’s Party MEPs, supported by the far-right, continue to centre the debate on funding for NGOs? The real end goal here is discrediting and defunding NGOs in order to sideline them even further in political decision-making.
“We aim to work from the political centre and build constructive, workable compromises,” said the office of Malik Azmani, a Dutch liberal from the Renew Europe faction, who is leading talks on the bill.