Brussels on edge: Corruption probe pushes EU toward defining crisis Politico on fraud shaking “Garden of Eden”

Politico has published an article covering the investigation of corruption in EU institutions. Caliber.Az reprints an abridged version of the piece. 

“Ursula von der Leyen is facing the starkest challenge to the EU’s accountability in a generation ― with a fraud probe ensnaring two of the biggest names in Brussels and threatening to explode into a full-scale crisis.

An announcement by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office that the EU’s former foreign affairs chief and a senior diplomat currently working in von der Leyen’s Commission had been detained on December 2 was seized on by her critics, with renewed calls that she face a fourth vote of no confidence.

‘The credibility of our institutions is at stake,’ said Manon Aubry, co-chair of The Left in the European Parliament.

If proven, the allegations would set in motion the biggest scandal to engulf Brussels since the mass resignation of the Jacques Santer Commission in 1999 over allegations of financial mismanagement.

Police detained former Commission Vice President Federica Mogherini and Stefano Sannino, who was the EEAS [The European External Action Service ― ed.] secretary-general from 2021 until he was replaced earlier this year.

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office said it had ‘strong suspicions’ that a 2021-2022 tendering process to set up a diplomatic academy attached to the College of Europe, where Mogherini is rector, hadn’t been fair and that the facts, if proven, ‘could constitute procurement fraud, corruption, conflict of interest and violation of professional secrecy.’

The saga looks set to inflame already strained relations between von der Leyen and the current boss of the EEAS, EU High Representative Kaja Kallas, four EU officials told POLITICO. 

Mogherini and Sannino have not been charged and their detention does not imply guilt [According to European media reports, Mogherini was released around 1 a.m. on December 3 ―ed.] 

Crime series

The investigation comes as Euroskeptic, populist and far-right parties ride a wave of voter dissatisfaction and at a time when the EU is pressuring countries both within and outside the bloc over their own corruption scandals.

‘Funny how Brussels lectures everyone on ‘rule of law’ while its own institutions look more like a crime series than a functioning union,’ Zoltán Kovács, spokesperson for the government of Hungary said on X.

Romanian MEP Gheorghe Piperea, a member of the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists group, who was behind a failed no-confidence vote in von der Leyen in July, told POLITICO he was considering trying to trigger a fresh motion.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told state media that EU officials ‘prefer to ignore their own problems, while constantly lecturing everyone else.’

The EU has struggled to shake off a series of corruption scandals since this decade began. Tuesday’s [December 2] raids come on the back of the 2022 ‘Qatargate’ scandal, when the Gulf state was accused of seeking to influence MEPs through bribes and gifts, as well as this year’s bribery probe into Chinese tech giant Huawei’s lobbying activities in Europe. 

Those investigations implicated members of the European Parliament, and at the time Commission officials were quick to point the finger at lawmakers and distance themselves from the scandals.

But the Commission hasn’t been immune to allegations of impropriety. In 2012, then-Health Commissioner John Dalli resigned over a tobacco lobbying scandal. Von der Leyen herself was on the receiving end of a slap-down by the EU’s General Court, which ruled earlier this year that she shouldn’t have withheld from the public text messages that she exchanged with the CEO of drug giant Pfizer during the Covid-19 pandemic.

December 2’s revelations are far more dangerous for the Commission, given the high profile of the suspects and the gravity of the allegations they face.

Disastrous impact

After serving as a European Commission vice president and head of the EEAS, Mogherini was appointed rector of the College of Europe in 2020. In 2022 she became the director of the European Union Diplomatic Academy, the project at the heart of the December 2 dawn raids.

Sannino was the EEAS’s top civil servant and is now the director-general for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf department in the Commission.

Cristiano Sebastiani, the staff representative of one of the EU’s major trade unions, Renouveau & Démocratie, said that if proven, the allegations would have ‘a disastrous impact on the credibility of the institutions concerned, and more broadly on citizens’ perception of all European institutions.’ He said he had received ‘tens of messages’ from EU staff concerned about reputational damage.

‘This is not good for EU institutions and for the Commission services. It is not good for Europe, it steers attention away from other things,’ said a Commission official granted anonymity to speak freely. ‘It conveys this idea of elitism, of an informal network doing favors. Also, Mogherini was one of the most successful [EU high representatives], it’s not good in terms of public diplomacy.’,” the article reads.