New research into the extent of billionaire George Soros’s funding activity has revealed the Hungarian-American pumped more than $700 million (€625 million) into progressive causes across Europe in recent years with millions of Euros gifted to Roma organisations.
US number crunchers found that major beneficiaries of Soros’s largesse via his Open Society Foundation in Europe have included the Roma Education Fund ($33.1 million/€29.5 million), the European Council on Foreign Relations ($29.2 million/€26 million), Roma Foundation for Europe ($20.2 million/€18 million) and the Central European University ($15.5 million/€13.8 million).
While many of the NGOs that received funding claim to promote human rights and democratic governance, critics argue that the donations are meant to influence political agendas, support organisations that advocate for open borders, Islamisation, and ever-broadening censorship against so-called hate speech.
Jennica Pounds, active under the handle DataRepublican on X, told Brussels Signal that the data came entirely from Open Society itself. “It was just difficult and slow to access this data,” she said.
Pounds said that the biggest European takeaway from the data was the number of recent grants for the Roma, with more than €40 million given to Roma-related foundations in 2023.
“However, I am not close enough to European politics to understand why that is or what is being accomplished for ‘democracy’ there,” the researcher said.
? Download Soros Grant Spreadsheet ?
Ever wonder where George Soros is sending his money? ? I've extracted and published the public Open Society Foundations grant database in spreadsheet format. This is your chance to dig through the receipts. ??
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— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) May 12, 2025
A breakdown of Soros’s grant distribution reveals significant allocations to various regions, with the United States receiving the lion’s share at $2.1 billion (€1.87 billion), followed by Europe at $701 million (€625 million).
Regions and countries less democratic than the US and Europe received only a fraction of the funding, while countries overrepresented in the figures included Hungary and Poland.
Across Europe, substantial amounts went to so-called fact-checking and ‘independent’ journalism, which could be seen as an attempt to shape media narratives or promote certain viewpoints and raises concerns about media bias. Universities and educational institutions also received considerable support from the Open Society Foundation.
Highly politicised, sometimes even apparently conflicting causes, such as LGBTQ advocacy and advocacy of religious garnment also received substantial funding.
NGOs had much more contact with the European Commission under Ursula von der Leyen, compared with her predecessor Jean-Claude Juncker, new data shows. https://t.co/5wkEIjNHOB
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) January 16, 2025
