Members of the European Parliament, who are investigating the use of surveillance spyware by EU governments, sharply criticized Israel on Wednesday.

The lack of transparency in allowing the sale of Israeli spyware has been criticized.

European lawmakers also condemned the Polish government for refusing to meet during a fact-finding visit to Warsaw that ended Wednesday.

"It is regrettable and we condemn the fact that the Polish authorities do not want to cooperate with our investigative committee," the head of the delegation, Jeroen Lenners, told a news conference in Warsaw.

The committee is investigating the use by governments of Israel's Pegasus spyware and other invasive surveillance tools, viewing such technology as a threat to democracy in the 27-nation bloc.

Pegasus was developed by Israel's NSO Group and is designed to breach mobile phones and extract vast amounts of information from them, including text messages, passwords, locations and microphone and camera recordings. The company markets the technology as a tool to target criminals but many cases have been discovered worldwide of governments using it against dissidents, journalists and political opponents.

In Europe, cyber sleuths have found traces of Pegasus or other spyware in Poland, Hungary, Spain and Greece.

Sophie in 't Veld, the rapporteur of the inquiry, said the committee has learned that the NSO group has sold spyware to 14 EU governments, using export licenses issued by the Israeli government. It learned that NSO stopped selling to two of those, but won't say which ones. They are widely believed to be Poland and Hungary due to their democratic backsliding.

Greece has been rocked by revelations that Nikos Androulakis, a European Parliament member and head of Greece's third-largest political party, was put under surveillance last year with Predator spyware when he was running for his PASOK party's leadership. A financial journalist was also under surveillance.

That follows revelations of spyware used against government critics in Poland and Hungary and against Catalan separatists in Spain.

During their visit, which began Monday, the 10-member delegation met with Poles targeted by the spyware, including a prosecutor and a senator, and other officials including members of the opposition-controlled Senate investigating Pegasus use.