The EU Picks Up USAID’s Slack In Funding Foreign Election NGOs Across Europe

The European Union (EU) is funding nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) accused of working to discredit right-wing election observers ahead of Hungary’s tight election Sunday, according to Republican international election observers and right-leaning party leaders.

Sources told the Daily Caller that these leftist NGOs raised concerns about election fraud and discredited Republican international election observers before Serbia’s March elections had even taken place. They fear the same tactics are now being applied in Hungary’s elections. (RELATED: Virginia GOP Unleashes Volunteer Army To Stop Democrat Gerrymandering Power Grab)

International election observers are intended to operate as independent third parties, tasked with assessing how democratically an election is conducted and how accurately the results are recorded and reported.

Jake Hoffman, for instance, is an American observer labeled by the European Platform for Democratic Elections (EPDE) as a “fake observer,” a designation granted to “groups and individuals who lack independent credibility and methodology.”

Hoffman has helped write election-integrity legislation in Florida, has run a 501(c)(4) focused on election integrity around the U.S., has written reports and documents on the vulnerabilities of U.S. elections and has observed elections in the country of Georgia.

I’ve been doing international third party observation of the Georgian elections this weekend. As people protest in Tbilisi; A few takeaways:

1) They don’t do universal mail in ballots.
2) They mandate IDs, fingerprints, and receipts w/ face ID.
3) Paper ballots backup… pic.twitter.com/G8GxTX8HDY

— Jake Hoffman (@jakehoffmanfl) October 4, 2025

EPDE, which says it’s funded by the EU, states on its website that Hoffman is a Republican who holds “institutional affiliation to the Tampa Bay Young Republicans and Florida Young Republicans.”

International observers from the Young Republican National Federation, the International Organization for the Family, Republicans for National Renewal and the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) were allegedly set to observe Serbia’s March election, according to Balkan Insight’s media publication BIRN, which deemed them “right-wing, pro-Trump” U.S. groups.

AFPI denied sending observers after BIRN published the article.

Rasa Nedeljkov, programme director of the Centre for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA), which is still under contract for $3.4 million from USAID, slammed “fake observers.”

“What we have are fake observers with foreign passports and interpreters directly linked to the authorities,” he said, the outlet reported.

“That raises additional concern this week,” he told BIRN. “It is clear they want to create noise in the public sphere and undermine genuine observation.”

Hoffman told the Caller that he expects many large organizations to stop participating in international election integrity efforts to avoid negative press.

We’re out here internationally observing Serbian elections today! 🇷🇸 Fascinating to see how many domestic observers are around every polling station. pic.twitter.com/d4Nu2CIklu

— Jake Hoffman (@jakehoffmanfl) March 29, 2026

Hoffman claimed that the NGOs discrediting international right-wing observers are simultaneously taking the statements from “domestic opposition liberal observers” at face value.

“I’d like to see the report that they’ve given to anybody on the left that said they were disqualified or not qualified enough to be an election observer because they’re too far left,” Hoffman said.

A member of the presidency of Serbia’s majority party SNS, Nemanja Zavišić, told the Caller that the election in March ran smoothly — unlike past elections only observed by liberal European NGOs.

Some of the groups that observed Serbia’s 2022 election include CRTA and the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations, which consists of 22 non profits and NGOS. The group lists the EU as a past donor on its website.

Zavišić said the American-based observers visited polling stations in municipalities across Serbia and came away believing that the U.S. should adopt some Serbian election policies, including requiring a valid ID to cast a ballot.

Zavišić said that despite the American observers having legally applied, the “left-liberal NGOs and globalist media” pushed the fake observer narrative.

“Throughout the years, those leftist NGOs were the only ones observing the elections, and their reports were always biased, especially in the countries where sovereignists are in power, such as Romania, Georgia, Hungary and now Serbia,” Zavišić said. “It is very clear that their goal is to try and show the European public that elections in Serbia are not held in a legal procedure, although that has nothing to do with the reality.”

Although Zavišić claims the election went smoothly, CRTA rated election day between “bad to worst,” citing systemic fraud.

“The election day bluntly confirmed what was already seen during the campaign,” CRTA’s final report concluded.

“In short, this can hardly be called an election.”

Hoffman and his Republican cohorts were also brought up in a post-election report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Speaking of the observers, the report claimed, “Rather than objectively observing the election, watchdogs argue they functioned as imported content creators, providing the ruling party with a sanitized digital alibi while actual voters faced intimidation.”

OCCRP claimed that 29% of its funding was frozen after USAID was slashed, The Guardian reported in February 2025. OCCRP received 38% of its funding from the U.S. government in 2024, according to NiemanLab.

They also received funding from Soros’ Open Society Foundations, MediaPart reported in 2024, and they were awarded EU funding after USAID was defunded.

“These guys are literally taking money,” Hoffman said about the NGOs. “They are state-sponsored media. And they have to kind of do this disassociation where they’re pretending that they’re independent journalists. And I’m the biased one, right?”

Zavišić told the Caller that the left-wing Soros-funded NGOs “can by no means be called non-governmental, as they are funded precisely by governments whose interests they represent in the countries where they operate.”

Now, as the Hungarian election draws near, Hoffman is concerned that similar talking points of international election interference have already taken place.

TOPSHOT – US Vice President JD Vance (R) and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban shake hands on stage during a “Day of Friendship” event at MTK Sportpark in Budapest, Hungary on April 7, 2026. (Photo by Jonathan Ernst / POOL / AFP via Getty Images)

Vice President JD Vance endorsed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and he visited Budapest in April to rally support for the country’s leader, The Guardian reported. Orbán has been in power for 16 years.

Upon arriving, Vance told reporters that the EU has been responsible for “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference” he had ever witnessed.

Vance claimed that the “bureaucrats in Brussels” hate Orbán, have purposely attempted to make Hungary less energy-independent and have tried to increase costs, The Guardian reported.

Orbán’s opposition, Peter Magyar, also suggested that Orbán released a statement about Vance’s visit to Hungary on X.

“No foreign country may interfere in Hungarian elections,” he wrote in part. (RELATED: White House Warns Staff Against Betting On Prediction Markets Amid Iran War)

Magyar’s Tisza party has a lead in most polls, according to The Guardian.

Hoffman said that if Magyar loses, his party will say the election was stolen, stage protests, and blame Russian and American interference.

The Caller reached out to the International Organization for the Family and Republicans for National Renewal but has not heard back as of publication.