The German government has responded to 24 hostile parliamentary questions submitted by members of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party last month. Many of the questions were about OCCRP.
The questions are part of a larger disinformation campaign by AfD members that falsely asserts that OCCRP is a tool of the European Commission. (See the questions, OCCRP’s response, and the German government response.)
The AfD, currently the second-largest party in the German parliament, is openly hostile to Brussels and has made opposition to what it sees as EU overreach a key part of its platform. Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has classified the party as a “right-wing extremist organization,” in part because its views about ethnicity are “incompatible with the free democratic order.”
Several of the AfD questions ask about OCCRP’s German and EU funding and make assertions that OCCRP is attempting to improperly influence European elections. OCCRP has no active grants from the German government.
The German government did not provide substantive comments on other assertions contained within the AfD members’ questions. Among these is the transparently false claim that OCCRP was “behind the so-called Voice of Europe affair,” a series of stories published ahead of European elections this spring.
The stories, which reported that a pro-Russian influence operation had allegedly funneled covert payments to right-wing European politicians, including an AfD member, were published by mainstream outlets across the continent, including Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and Politico Europe.
Though several of these outlets have partnered with OCCRP in the past, none are members of the OCCRP network and OCCRP had nothing to do with the “Voice of Europe” stories.
The AfD also asked about a grant of about €600,000 that OCCRP received from the European Commission.
It’s true that OCCRP accepted EU funding to train journalists in Europe on investigative reporting techniques, a fact that has never been hidden and was publicly announced. The grant pays for capacity-building, not for editorial campaigns on specific topics.
The AfD submission also implied that OCCRP could not be considered an independent media organization because it had previously received grants from the U.S. government.
This is based on a well-worn narrative previously deployed against OCCRP by authoritarian governments, state media, and typically Russian-aligned commentators. OCCRP has never hidden the extent of its funding by U.S. government donors; all its sources of funding have always been publicly available on its website.
OCCRP policies bar donors from knowing about, shaping, or vetoing specific investigations, and its contracts with U.S. agencies guaranteed OCCRP “sole control” over editorial processes and ensured OCCRP could publish “without consideration to USG recommendations.”
“The German government’s answers contained nothing of interest because there was nothing there,” said OCCRP Editor in Chief Miranda Patrucic. “We’ve always been open about our funding. The AfD’s questions were based on false premises, and their goal was nothing less than to misinform and manipulate.”
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