Corruption Probe Reveals Brussels’ Double Standards

Senior figures in EU member states that have long been targeted by the Brussels establishment over alleged rule of law ‘violations’ are frustrated—though perhaps not surprised—to see members of this elite group being accused of serious wrongdoing themselves.

Hungarian MEP Kinga Gál last week said it was “staggering” that the EU’s most senior ‘diplomat’ should be threatening Budapest with blocking access to a major defence loan “unless we carry out the so-called ‘rule of law’ reforms,” when “another corruption scandal has just erupted in Brussels”—which, of course, the establishment “suddenly has nothing to say about.”

Polish MEP Ewa Zajączkowska-Hernik added on Friday that “the level of corruption among the EU’s pseudo-elites is unbelievable” because “they’re the ones lecturing Poland on democratic standards.”

The main figure involved in this latest corruption scandal is former EU foreign policy chief (and Italian leftist) Federica Mogherini. She, alongside two others, was arrested last Tuesday as part of a probe into “fraud and corruption,” and was later released due to not being a flight risk. She has since resigned from her roles, saying this was “in line with the utmost rigour and fairness with which I always carried out my duties.”

Zajączkowska-Hernik complained that while she was vice president of the European Commission, Mogherini “closely collaborated with Donald Tusk, who was then president of the European Council,” and that “she was a co-author of the policy of attacks and blackmail against the Polish government for so-called violations of the rule of law.”

Federica Mogherini is just another person implicated in the corruption scandal at the top of the EU, who lectured Poland on what democracy should look like. One big, rotten-to-the-core band of hypocrites!

Allegations of fraud are connected to an EU- (or, rather, European taxpayer)-funded training scheme for junior diplomats—in particular, claims that an EU tender to run the new European Diplomatic Academy, ultimately won by Mogherini, was rigged.

One bidder told Euractiv on Monday that “the whole tender was designed to fit only [the] College of Europe,” led by Mogherini until her resignation last week, adding: “Nobody else could actually participate.” They also said the “frustration” surrounding the process “was quite tense and unanimous.”

People feel that this is one of those deals we thought we wouldn’t see any more in Europe.

Austrian newspaper Exxpress reported on Sunday that a multi-million-euro building suggests the “College may have been aware of key criteria even before the tender was published.”

This prompted Austrian MEP Harald Vilimsky to brand Brussels as “Europe’s Cosa Nostra”—or, more simply put, its mafia.