“The European Commission is in the process of tightening the rules concerning hospitality offered by an external event organiser”, a spokesperson for the EU institution told EUROPE on Friday 3 March.
For example, in the future, a member of Commission staff may accept travel and/or accommodation from a third party organiser only in the context of major international commitments, such as UN, G7 and G20 meetings, or in the context of official visits to an EU Member State.
The process of reviewing internal rules was launched after Politico revealed that the Director-General for the Commission’s department on Transport, Henrik Hololei, had benefited in recent years from several flights to Doha offered by Qatar or Qatari state-owned entities, including during the period when the Commission was negotiating an aviation agreement with the emirate on behalf of the EU.
On Friday, a spokesperson for the EU institution, Balazs Ujvari, said that in the Commission’s view, Hololei’s travel “was all within the rules”.
In the vast majority of cases, the EU institution covers travel and accommodation costs. When a third party invites a member of staff, a prior internal analysis is carried out to identify possible conflicts of interest and, when authorisation is granted, the beneficiary must mention this in a specific register.
Several Green MEPs, including Germany’s Daniel Freund and France’s Karima Delli, have written to the EU institution to get to the bottom of this.
The review process also aims to adapt the Commission’s internal rules on missions according to the climate context.
After the press revealed the alleged third country bribery scandal in the European Parliament, the Parliament withdrew its approval of the Interinstitutional Agreement on the EU-Qatar aviation deal (see EUROPE 13111/5) at the end of 2022. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)