By Andrew Bounds in Strasbourg

 October 24 2007

The European Commission was on Tuesday accused of covert lobbying by funding groups campaigning for controls on pesticide use.

Christopher Heaton-Harris, a British Conservative MEP, said he had been “bombarded by e-mails” from groups funded by the Commission’s environment directorate pressing him to vote for a ban on aerial spraying and other measures tougher than the Commission had proposed.

The e-mails came from an organisation called Pesticidewatch, whose constituent organisations receive large amounts of funding from the European Commission, he told parliament in Strasbourg.

“This payroll lobbying has certainly led to an increase in the number of e-mails being received by MEPs – but surely it is wrong for one Commission directorate to use large sums of taxpayers’ money to abuse the role of non-governmental organisations and try to change the views of parliamentarians and other Commission directorates on this matter.”

A spokeswoman for Stavros Dimas, the environment commissioner, said the accusation was “ludicrous”. “Just because we finance NGOs does not mean we control what they say,” she said.

“They are guided by the views of their members. We fund them because there are many voices that are not heard at European level. There is a democratic deficit.”

Mr Dimas’ department gave €7.9m ($11.2m) to organisations engaged in environmental protection in 2006, including WWF and the European Cyclists’ Federation.

Ingeborg Graessle, a German centre-right MEP, last week held a hearing on Brussels’ use of NGOs. Some 10,000 NGOs receive €800m a year from the Commission, she said.

Ms Graessle added: “We could convince ourselves on the fact that the NGOs are financially controlled by the Commission. However these controls do not give any reference if the political aims of the European Union are actually achieved.”

The Pesticidewatch campaign, which has 22 members including Pesticide Action Network and Friends of the Earth, which both declare Brussels funding, was only partially successful. MEPs on Tuesday agreed to ban spraying in public areas such as parks and schools. They also said that the most dangerous carcinogenic substances should be banned.

However, they rejected earlier committee proposals for an aerial spray ban and for countries to cut pesticide use by a fifth. They also threw out the creation of buffer zones around water courses.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007