Nigel Farage used around €1.8 million in European Parliament funds to finance his Brexit campaign activities, including the 2015 Say No to EU tour, campaign materials and production costs – while simultaneously standing at the podium denouncing the EU budget, according to a Financial Times investigation published to mark the tenth anniversary of the Brexit vote.
The irony is precise. At the launch of the Say No to EU tour at Westminster’s Emmanuel Centre, Farage declared: “We’re shuffling £55mn a day into a club whose accounts have not been properly signed off for the last 19 years in a row.” The hire of that same venue, the purple campaign banners and the production company live-streaming his speech were all funded by that same EU budget, through his European Parliament political group, the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy grouping.
What the documents show
The FT obtained detailed accounts of the EFDD group showing itemised expenses for dozens of campaign meetings, posters depicting immigrants as a threat, and leaflets with headings such as “How the European Union is destroying Britain’s traditional countryside life.” Many materials bore the UKIP logo. Key UKIP figures appeared at Say No to EU events. The documents include around €218,000 for security – a sum higher than previously reported.
European Parliament rules allow political groups to fund activities related to “a referendum campaign on a European subject.” However, a European Parliament spokesperson told the FT that group funds could not be used to “finance any form of European, national, regional or local electoral campaign or to finance political parties at national and European level.” The materials bearing UKIP’s logo and featuring key UKIP figures raise obvious questions about where the line between an EU referendum campaign and domestic party activity was drawn.
Under UK law, the position is equally problematic. “There is a statutory list of permissible donors and it doesn’t include the group in the European parliament,” said Gavin Millar KC, a barrister specialising in election law at Matrix Chambers. “You can’t have foreign money coming into our domestic politics, whether it’s elections or referendum campaigns. This raises questions about the origin of these funds, how they were paid out and whether it was permissible.” He said it would be for the Electoral Commission to investigate.
The regulated campaign period question
A further complication involves the official regulated period of the Brexit referendum, which began on 15 April 2016. During this time, only registered participants with a link to the UK could spend more than £10,000. The EFDD was not a registered participant. While most of the expenses in the documents predate the official campaign, items worth around €42,000 could potentially have been used during the regulated period – including approximately €12,000 for the website saynotueu.com billed in December 2016, and a campaign trailer hired for €28,000 until the end of 2016.
“If these figures are correct it’s not just a couple of quid over the £10,000,” said Justin Fisher, professor of political science at Brunel University. “If an organisation is spending in excess of the limit they’re permitted then it’s a breach of the law.”
Transparency International calls for investigation
Transparency International EU, which has previously complained about far-right groups including the Patriots for Europe and its predecessor the Identity and Democracy group allegedly misusing over €4.5m in total, said the revelations warranted an immediate European Parliament inquiry.
Nick Aiossa, director at Transparency International EU, said: “It is ironic that the EU’s staunchest detractor may have once more profited from monies taken from the very institution he claims to despise. Ten years since the UK voted to leave the EU, the European Parliament must still ensure that Mr Farage adhered to its spending rules. These cases should serve as a wake-up call for the European Parliament: it should manage public money itself, instead of delegating budgetary authority to political groups who cannot be trusted with such responsibility.”
Barry Andrews, a liberal MEP, described the revelations as “serious and must be investigated.”
Not the first time
The FT’s findings are not the first time Farage and his associates have faced questions about the use of EU funds for domestic political purposes. Farage himself has been found to have breached disclosure rules 17 times in his current parliamentary career. Six UKIP MEPs previously had to repay a total of around £771,000 after their assistants were found not to have been working on EU affairs. Farage personally repaid £39,500. A few months after the June 2016 referendum, the European Parliament found that the Alliance for Direct Democracy – the European political party of which UKIP was part – had breached rules by spending around €500,000 on opinion polls about Brexit and ahead of the 2015 UK election.
Farage has also previously admitted using EU taxpayers’ money to pay for his security detail at campaign events when he was an MEP, saying this was necessary because of threats from “the hard left.”
The wider context
The FT’s revelations land at a moment when Farage is already under formal Parliamentary Standards investigation over his undisclosed £5m personal gift from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, and the FCA has been asked to investigate his stablecoin advocacy. Lord Heseltine has called Brexit a “heinous crime” for which Farage, Johnson and Gove should answer. James O’Brien has been documenting Farage’s evasions since 2014.
Farage’s spokesman dismissed the FT’s findings as “utterly baseless and without merit,” adding: “Ten years on from the historic vote to leave the EU, the Financial Times are still intent on fighting the battles of yesterday.” The Electoral Commission said it could not comment on potential breaches without having considered all available information.
The EFDD ceased to exist in 2019. It is unclear precisely how its funds were paid out in the UK – whether through a third party, which would have implications for the funding’s legal status. That ambiguity is part of what makes the picture difficult to assess definitively – and part of what any investigation would need to resolve.
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