Alex Wong/Getty EU lobbying credited with helping kill death penalty in US Spending watchdog says EU programs against capital punishment are having an effect in several countries.

The European Union spent more than €3 million to lobby against the death penalty in the United States between 2007 and 2013, and according to the EU's top budget watchdog the effort has paid off.

A report released Thursday by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) concluded that six of the seven U.S.-based projects funded by the EU to promote the abolition of capital punishment have had a “combined positive impact” on the debate, even though the extent of that impact is difficult to quantify.

However, the ECA criticized one EU-funded project which sought to strengthen organizations fighting the death penalty in two U.S. states, saying the initiative had an impact "far from the extent expected."

The report does not directly name the NGO, but a close reading of the report reveals that it is the Washington-based National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP). The ECA found that "awareness-raising projects" in the U.S. had been more effective than the projects involving research — including that of the NCADP.

The NCADP was awarded almost €306,000 by the EU in 2009 for a program targeting the states of Virginia and Texas, which have the death penalty. Auditors were concerned that a state-by-state political approach could dilute EU resources without offering much return. The NCADP declined to comment on the report's findings.

“Overall, EU money should be spent where priorities have been set and the most impact can be achieved,” a senior EU auditor said. “Both the U.S. and, say, China are considered priorities. But in terms of having impact, the U.S. is the best.”

The ECA was not able to establish a direct causal link between EU spending and progress in the U.S. campaign. But auditors noted that over the period of time that EU money was spent in the U.S., a number of states abolished the death penalty.

New Mexico ended executions in 2009, Illinois in 2011, Connecticut in 2012 and Maryland in 2013. The number of death sentences fell from 118 in 2009 to 83 in 2013, with the number of executions carried out also falling steadily.

EU institutions are strongly committed to fighting the death penalty around the globe and act both at a diplomatic level as well as through the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), which provides grants to NGOs to implement projects. The death penalty is retained by 58 countries with an estimated 5,000 executions each year.

Between 2007 and 2013, EU institutions approved some 180 EIDHR grants worth €10 million, which went towards efforts to fight torture and abolish the death penalty. The projects were spread over 120 countries.

The ECA report found that the funding of projects around the world was “partially effective” but needed to be "better targeted" by focusing on those countries which EU institutions had listed as priorities.

“Within our sample we examined countries like Georgia, Congo and South Africa, where torture has not been defined as a priority,” a senior EU auditor said. “Yet in spite of that low priority, there have been projects in those countries.”

The ECA found that projects were “not well coordinated with other EU action” — including diplomatic efforts — and the selection of the NGOs which are awarded the projects “lacked rigor.”

The European Commission and the EU’s foreign affairs department, the European External Action Service, have responded to the auditors’ criticism, saying in detailed statements included in the report that they remain committed to the work of the EIDHR and that funds allocated have been put “to good use.”

The European institutions also said they were pleased with the impact of their spending in the U.S., pointing to the role played by an EU-funded report by the American Bar Association in the recent decision by the governor of Pennsylvania to introduce a death-penalty moratorium in February.

The EU also defended the complexity of its funding arrangements by saying that the “substance of these projects [is] often of a high political nature” which does not lend itself to “easily quantifiable metrics” as the ECA would demand for infrastructure projects.