NGO spending in Spain's Ceuta crisis: €7 million a day
Seven million euros a day in subsidies for NGOs handling the Ceuta crisis, most of it unaudited: the figures fueling the controversy.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
The NGO bill in Ceuta: €7 million a day without audits
Seven million euros a day. That is the figure attributed to the flow of public money toward non-governmental organizations working in the Ceuta crisis. The amount, impossible to verify without access to subsidy files, has become the centerpiece of a controversy mixing humanitarian management, political interests and administrative opacity.
The data circulating in analyses of the economic situation at Spain's southern border sketch a funding web that is hard to trinc. It is cited, for example, that Cruz Roja (the Spanish Red Cross) receives 600 million euros a year. Accem, another organization involved in migrant management, reportedly went from 46 million a year when the current Prime Minister took office to 250 million. Both figures are repeated without any public breakdown to back them up.
The prevailing thesis among skeptics is that this money does not go to direct aid, but to sustaining a jobs-and-patronage structure: Accem would have 4,000 employees, turning the subsidy into an employment mechanism for sympathizers rather than a resource for migrants. Added to this is the case of Manuel de la Rocha, father of the head of the Economic Office of the Prime Minister's Office, who reportedly received 68 million over three years for his organization, Movimiento por la Paz y el Desarme (Movement for Peace and Disarmament).
None of this is proven; these are figures circulating in public debate that the institutions refrain from refuting with a set of accounts. But the opacity of the system invites suspicion. As the bill keeps growing, the feeling is that the Ceuta crisis is not only a humanitarian problem, but also a business with a cash flow nobody fully explains.
That said, given the current climate, these organizations are likely to keep receiving more funds, not less. The question is how long a model can hold up where aid is measured in millions per day and auditing remains a empty promise.
Seven million euros a day. That is the figure attributed to the flow of public money toward non-governmental organizations working in the Ceuta crisis. The amount, impossible to verify without access to subsidy files, has become the centerpiece of a controversy mixing humanitarian management, political interests and administrative opacity.
The data circulating in analyses of the economic situation at Spain's southern border sketch a funding web that is hard to trinc. It is cited, for example, that Cruz Roja (the Spanish Red Cross) receives 600 million euros a year. Accem, another organization involved in migrant management, reportedly went from 46 million a year when the current Prime Minister took office to 250 million. Both figures are repeated without any public breakdown to back them up.
The prevailing thesis among skeptics is that this money does not go to direct aid, but to sustaining a jobs-and-patronage structure: Accem would have 4,000 employees, turning the subsidy into an employment mechanism for sympathizers rather than a resource for migrants. Added to this is the case of Manuel de la Rocha, father of the head of the Economic Office of the Prime Minister's Office, who reportedly received 68 million over three years for his organization, Movimiento por la Paz y el Desarme (Movement for Peace and Disarmament).
None of this is proven; these are figures circulating in public debate that the institutions refrain from refuting with a set of accounts. But the opacity of the system invites suspicion. As the bill keeps growing, the feeling is that the Ceuta crisis is not only a humanitarian problem, but also a business with a cash flow nobody fully explains.
That said, given the current climate, these organizations are likely to keep receiving more funds, not less. The question is how long a model can hold up where aid is measured in millions per day and auditing remains a empty promise.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (31 replies).
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