The European Parliament voted on Thursday to establish a working group to probe European Union funding of nongovernmental organizations, in a victory for right-wing political groups, writes POLITICO.

“The proposal - led by the powerful center-right European People’s Party (EPP), and backed by the right-wing European Conservatives & Reformists group (ECR) and the far-right Patriots for Europe (PfE) - was the latest of many moves by Europe’s right to increase scrutiny of NGOs.

The center-left Socialists & Democrats, the liberals of Renew Europe, the Greens and The Left all voted against the working group.

Right-wing groups across Europe have expressed growing concern that NGOs are using EU grant money to lobby for stringent regulations in areas such as the environment and health.

The result of Thursday’s vote reflected the EPP’s growing willingness to side with political parties to its right, eschewing the centrist alliance that has long dominated EU politics, in favor of an informal right-wing coalition dubbed the Venezuela majority.

Last month, POLITICO reported that the EPP, the largest group in the Parliament, had proposed setting up a working group in the committee in charge of reviewing whether the EU spends its budget correctly. The idea was presented as a softer alternative to the ECR’s demand for an inquiry committee, a much more aggressive mechanism for investigating violations of EU law.

“We have long said that not enough is being done to ensure transparency in NGO funding — and we meant it,” Tomáš Zdechovský, lead EPP lawmaker in the budgetary control committee, said on Thursday. The EPP said the working group will scrutinize Commission grant contracts awarded to NGOs.

ECR Co-Chairman Nicola Procaccini welcomed the vote’s result, saying, “Without our initiative, this would never have happened.” He said two ECR and EPP lawmakers will lead the working group.

The idea for the scrutiny body started when EPP lawmakers in the budgetary control committee accused the Commission of financing NGOs to lobby Parliament on its behalf via public contracts. The right-wing ECR reacted by proposing a committee of inquiry, but the EPP pushed for trying to compromise with the S&D and Renew to create a less powerful working group.

An inquiry committee is a separate entity in the Parliament created to investigate serious allegations of breaches of EU law. Only a handful of inquiry committees have been set up in the past, for scandals such as the Panama Papers and the Pegasus spyware scandal. Meanwhile, a working group is an ad hoc body set up inside the committee already in charge of scrutinizing how the Commission handles the budget.

Ahead of the vote on Thursday, the centrist forces had said they were open to the idea if the working group’s mandate was broadened to other types of beneficiaries of EU funding, and not just NGOs. The EPP refused, prompting the other centrist groups to withdraw support.

“We denounce the ongoing unjustified attack of the right-wing in this Parliament against NGOs and the alignment of the EPP with the far-right,” Iratxe García, leader of the S&D group in Parliament, told the press in Strasbourg following the vote on Thursday.

“The EPP is making a shameful alliance with the far right for their witch-hunt on NGOs,” she added.

Civil society groups also criticized the decision. Nick Aiossa, director at the non-profit Transparency International EU, said that he hopes “the progressive forces in the Parliament recognise what this [working group]is: another institutional vehicle for the EPP and extreme right to attack NGOs.” He called on them to “boycott this illegitimate body”.

The far-right PfE group said: “We regret that the EPP and the left-wing groups refused to support a fully-fledged inquiry committee. However, with a right-wing majority, we achieved a scrutiny working group that will investigate the dubious NGO contracts””, - writes the author of the article.