EU Parliament sets up working group to scrutinise EU funding to NGOs
The European Parliament's political leaders agreed on Thursday to form a working group within the Committee on Budgetary Control (CONT) to scrutinise how the European Commission funds non-governmental organisations.
The group will include 13 MEPs chaired by German lawmaker Niclas Herbst with two co-rapporteurs, from the centre-right European People's Party and the right wing European Conservatives and Reformists, Parliament sources told Euronews.
The decision came after a spat over the financing of environmental NGOs by the European Commission, accused by the German newspaper Welt Am Sonntag of having secretly paid up to €700,000 to promote the bloc's climate policy. The Commission denied that it had signed "secret contracts' and claims it exercises a high degree of transparency in providing funding to NGOs.
The right and far-right groups of the European Parliament have been pushing to set up an inquiry committee to clarify the issue, but their request was voted down during the Conference of Presidents (CoP), the weekly meeting of the Parliament's political groups' leaders.
Instead, the CoP approved a working group, proposed by the European People's Party (EPP), the largest group in the Parliament, and ultimately backed also by the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and Patriots for Europe (PfE).
All the other groups of the so-called 'pro-european majority' (Socialists, liberals and Greens) were against both the inquiry committee and the working group, but on the latter they were outvoted by the so-called 'Venezuela majority', an alliance in the chamber which sees the EPP cooperating with other right-wing groups.
Working groups are ad hoc structures that enable European Parliament's committees to follow up on the implementation of legislation in place, conduct investigations and studies on very specific and time-defined issues. This one has a six-month mandate.
According to internal sources of the EPP, a working group was preferred to an inquiry committee as the former is more focused on scrutinising the future behaviour of the Commission, rather than focusing on what went wrong historically.
As Israel and Iran continue to exchange fire for the seventh consecutive day, a disinformation war is simultaneously escalating on social platforms.
Euronews' fact-checking team, Euroverify, has been analysing several viral videos emerging from Iran and Israel over recent days in order to verify their authenticity.
Our team found a significant number of old videos, unrelated to the current conflict, being falsely linked to the ongoing exchange of fire.
Many of them have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times and amplified across platforms, sowing confusion and misleading social media users.
A clip circulating widely across X, TikTok and Instagram, and seen hundreds of thousands of times, claims to show Iranians dancing as they shelter in tunnels in the capital of Tehran.
Some social media users allege they are celebrating Israeli strikes on the city.
"Iranians stuck in traffic on their way to northern Iran start singing and dancing inside a tunnel to celebrate Israeli attacks on the Islamic regime," one X user claims.
But a reverse image search using still shots from the clip shows that it was originally posted on Instagram as far back as September 2023.
Another video claims to show people fighting among themselves while sheltering at a Tel Aviv bunker.
One X post with the video has been viewed over 700,000 times.
Yet, the footage in fact shows an altercation at a Georgian court, which was first published on X on June 12, two days before Israel launched the first attacks against Iran.
On that day, a 21-year-old Georgian protester was sentenced to four years and six months in prison for "hitting police officers with a stick" during demonstrations against the ruling government last November.
Georgian media reported that following his sentencing the court building "descended into chaos" with hundreds of supporters, including the Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, present to lend their support to the accused.
Another video purports to show a crowd of Israeli citizens fleeing from a square in Tel Aviv amid Iranian strikes.
A reverse image search shows that the scene dates from April this year, when a false security alert triggered a swift evacuation of a square in Tel Aviv during a memorial day event.
While the scene does show residents fleeing an Israeli square, it pre-dates the current conflict.
Other social media users have shared a video claiming to show an explosion caused by an Iranian strike on Tel Aviv.
But the footage is astonishingly 22 years old, and shows a US strike on Iraq in 2003.
Similarly, recent footage showing an Israeli airstrike on Houthi targets in Yemen's capital Sanaa has been circulating with false claims that it shows explosions in Israel caused by Iranian attacks.
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Euronews
2 hours ago
- Euronews
Meeting between top EU diplomats and Iran's FM yields hope of talks
A meeting between top European diplomats and Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, on Friday yielded hopes of further talks but no indication of any immediate or concrete breakthrough, a week after Israel attacked Iran over Tehran's nuclear program, erupting into war between both sides. Foreign ministers from Britain, France, and Germany and the European Union's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, emerged from the talks at a Geneva hotel nearly four hours after Iran's Araghchi arrived for the meeting. It was the first face-to-face meeting between Western and Iranian officials since the start of the conflict. In a joint written statement issued after the talks ended, the three European nations and the EU said that they 'discussed avenues towards a negotiated solution to Iran's nuclear programme.' They reiterated their concerns about the 'expansion' of the nuclear program, adding that it has 'no credible civilian purpose.' EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said, 'We agreed that we will discuss nuclear but also broader issues that we have and keep the discussions open." 'The good result today is that we leave the room with the impression that the Iranian side is fundamentally ready to continue talking about all important issues,' German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said, adding both sides had held 'very serious talks.' While France's Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told reporters, military operations can slow Iran's nuclear program, but in no way can they eliminate it. 'We know well—after having seen what happened in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in Libya—how illusory and dangerous it is to want to impose regime change from outside.' Barrot also said that European nations 'invited the Iranian minister to envisage negotiations with all parties, including the United States, and without waiting for the end of the strikes." However promising, Iran ruled out new nuclear talks until attacks from Israel stop. According to Araghchi, Iran was ready to consider diplomacy only if Israel's "aggression is stopped." "I make it crystal clear that Iran's defence capabilities are non-negotiable," the Iranian foreign minister stressed after the Geneva talks. He expressed support for 'a continuation of discussions with the E3 and the EU and expressed his readiness to meet again in the near future.' He also denounced Israel's attacks against nuclear facilities in Iran and expressed 'grave concern' about what he called 'non-condemnation' by European nations. For his part, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy urged Tehran to continue its talks with the United States. Lammy said, 'We are keen to continue ongoing discussions and negotiations with Iran, and we urge Iran to continue their talks with the United States.' He added that 'we were clear: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.' He added there is 'a window of within two weeks where we can see a diplomatic solution' and urged Iran 'to take that off-ramp.' Trump delays decision Meanwhile, it remains unclear how that will happen as US President Donald Trump continues to weigh whether to attack Iran by striking its well-defended Fordo uranium enrichment facility, which is buried under a mountain and widely considered to be out of reach of all but America's 'bunker-buster' bombs. Trump said on Wednesday that he'll decide within two weeks whether the US military will get directly involved in the war, given the 'substantial chance' for renewed negotiations over Tehran's nuclear program. Israel says it launched its airstrike campaign to stop Iran from getting closer to being able to build a nuclear weapon. Iran and the United States had been negotiating over the possibility of a new diplomatic deal over Tehran's programme, though Trump has said Israel's campaign came after a 60-day window he set for the talks. 'We are entitled … to defend our territorial integrity' - Iran In light of the possibility of US involvement, Iran's supreme leader rejected Trump's calls for surrender Wednesday and warned that any military involvement by the Americans would cause 'irreparable damage to them.' Just before meeting the European diplomats on Friday, Foreign Minister Araghchi made a brief appearance before the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, telling the council that Israel's 'attacks on nuclear facilities are grave war crimes'. Araghchi insisted that Iran is "entitled … and determined to defend our territorial integrity, national sovereignty, and security with all force.' Tehran has long insisted its nuclear programme is peaceful, though it was the only non-nuclear-armed state to enrich uranium up to 60%, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%. The initial 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and the world powers was negotiated in large part by the three European nations. However, Iran has been found wanting in its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, leading to warnings by the EU states to reimpose sanctions that were suspended under the agreement.
AFP
5 hours ago
- AFP
Altered Trump video spreads amid Iran-Israel war
"We need to avoid getting involved in this conflict #trump #maga #israel #iran #middleeast #wwiii," says a June 15, 2025 post sharing the video on Instagram. The clip -- also shared to X, TikTok and YouTube -- claims to show Trump saying the United States should stay out of the conflict between the two arch enemies, which began when Israel targeted Iranian military bases and nuclear sites in a June 13 attack and has seen Iran respond with barrages of missiles and drones. "I think we should skip it," Trump appears to say in the video. "I don't know. I'm just not really feeling it. World War III folks, hard pass." Image Screenshot from Instagram taken June 20, 2025 Referencing nationwide protests against his agenda, Trump supposedly continued: "We've got enough going on stateside. We've got the 'No Kings' riots set to kick off this weekend. 'No Kings.' We like kings, actually, folks. We like one king in particular, quite frankly. The king of kings, our lord and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been working to draw elevated support from Trump, but the Republican US president said June 20 that Iran had a "maximum" of two weeks to avoid possible US air strikes, indicating he could take a decision before the fortnight deadline he set a day earlier. He had spent weeks before the attack pursuing a diplomatic path towards a deal to replace the nuclear deal with Iran that he tore up in his first term in 2018. The video purporting to show him saying the United States "should skip it," meanwhile, is altered. Reverse image searches reveal the footage was lifted from a May 28, 2025 event -- more than two weeks prior to Israel's strikes on Iran (archived here). Former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, who was sworn in at the ceremony as the interim US attorney for the District of Columbia, can be seen standing behind Trump throughout. The video and transcript show the president mentioned Israel's war on the Palestinian militant group Hamas and the US efforts to reach a deal with Iran, but he did not call for the United States to stay out of a conflict between the two Middle Eastern nations (archived here and here). He was asked at one point whether he warned Netanyahu against taking any action that could disrupt his talks with Iran, but he said he was pushing to follow the diplomatic path. The president made no mention of the "No Kings" protests. The manipulated video appears to lift footage from around the 18:36 mark of the May 28 footage, based on Trump's hand movements. In that moment, the president was talking about inflation. The voice cloning detection tool in the Verification Plugin, also known as InVID-WeVerify, found that the audio on the altered version is "very likely AI-generated." Some of the earliest posts sharing the clip included disclaimers saying it was a parody generated by artificial intelligence. AFP has debunked other misinformation about the Iran-Israel war here.
France 24
6 hours ago
- France 24
Europe powers urge Iran to keep up diplomacy despite Israeli strikes
British, French, German and EU top diplomats held talks in Geneva with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, giving diplomacy a chance one week after Israel started its bombardment. "The good result today is that we leave the room with the impression that the Iranian side is ready to further discuss all the important questions," said German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul in a statement alongside his European counterparts. "It is of great importance that the United States takes part in these negotiations and the solution," he added. The statements read by all four top diplomats in their native languages after the talks expressed hope of further progress but did not make any mention of a breakthrough. Araghchi, making his first trip outside Iran since the bombardment began, said Tehran was ready to "consider diplomacy" again only once Israel's "aggression is stopped". "In this regard I made it crystal clear that Iran's defence capabilities are not negotiable," he said. "We support the continuation of discussion... and express our readiness to meet again in the near future," he said. 'Urgently find a solution' British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: "We are keen to continue ongoing discussions and negotiations with Iran, and we urge Iran to continue their talks with the United States." "This is a perilous moment, and it is hugely important that we don't see regional escalation of this conflict," he added. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said there "can be no definitive solution through military means to the Iran nuclear problem. Military operations can delay it but they cannot eliminate it". After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not rule out killing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Barrot also warned: "It is illusory and dangerous to want to impose a regime change from the outside. It is up to the people to decide their own destiny." "We invited the Iranian minister to consider negotiations with all sides, including the United States, without awaiting the cessation of strikes, which we also hope for," he said. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas added: "Today the regional escalation benefits no-one. We must keep the discussions open." Iran's state-run IRNA news agency said earlier the Iranian delegation "emphasised that Iran has not left the negotiating table". Israel began its campaign on Friday last week saying the operation was aimed at halting Tehran from obtaining an atomic bomb, an ambition Iran denies having. Iran has in response launched strikes on Israel.
