A very interesting website was launched recently, http://www.followthemoney.eu/ which is worth an honorable mention in this newspaper, as we share many common values.

We hope that the site will indeed make a difference. There are some very good posts already, and we hope to see more hard-hitting investigation in the future. Further to this, we hope that Brussels, and indeed the whole of Europe will see the value and importance of projects which aim at transparency and accountability of European actors. This also includes the media, which should be greatful for quality sources functioning under creative commons!

About Follow the money

FollowTheMoney.eu aims to make it easier for European citizens to understand the EU budget: how it gets decided, where the money comes from and how it is spent. FollowTheMoney.eu comes from the same people that brought you farmsubsidy.org: journalists, researchers and activists who want to make the European Union work in a more transparent and accountable way.

We hope that FollowTheMoney.eu will build on the work of farmsubsidy.org in bringing to an end the secrecy of who gets what in EU farm subsidies, for example by applying the same approach to other areas of the budget like fisheries, structural and cohesion policy and development assistance. We hope it will complement the many media and civil society initiatives on the EU budget that are already out there.
Current contributors to FollowTheMoney.eu are: Brigitte Alfter, freelance journalist, co-founder of farmsubsidy.org and wobbing.eu Jana Mittemaier, Head of Brussels Office, Transparency International Nils Mulvad, data analyst and co-founder of farmsubsidy. org Jack Thurston, policy analyst, broadcaster and cofounder of farmsubsidy.org

Strong supporters

It’s quite interesting to note that there are some strong supporters in the project (whose magnitude and nature of support is however unknown). These include the German Marshall Fund, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Transparency International.