Free flights for MEPs should be reviewed says EU Ombudsman

Free flights and hospitality that are offered to European Commission officials and MEPs by companies or states should be reviewed, and it is difficult to imagine circumstances in which they should be accepted, the EU ethics watchdog has said.

“I think if an issue is sufficiently important to the commission or any other institutions, then I find it hard to believe that they wouldn’t have the resources to pay for themselves,” European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly said.

“I don’t know why that happens or why it is allowed to happen because it’s a gift. Why are [those offering] doing this? Because they want something in return, quite obviously.”

The EU’s anti-fraud office OLAF last month opened an inquiry into free flights given to the director general of the European Commission’s transport department Henrik Hololei by Qatar Airways at a time when his team were negotiating the Open Skies deal with Doha to open access to the EU aviation market.

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Mr Hololei was transferred to another role after the revelations, and the European Commission overhauled its rules on travel so that free travel must be approved by senior officials.

“This was in the middle of his department negotiating the open skies deal ... Who’s paying for his flights? Qatar Air[ways]. Even a small child would understand that’s a conflict of interest‚” Ms O’Reilly told journalists in Brussels on Tuesday. “To avoid even the perception of a conflict of interest, really all of those things shouldn’t happen at all.”

Ms O’Reilly spoke as she presented a report on her activities during 2022 in her role as European Ombudsman, which involves scrutinising conflicts of interests, ethical breaches in lobbying, transparency in public institutions, and “revolving doors” cases in which public officials go on to be offered jobs in sectors they previously regulated.

Under the European Parliament’s rules, MEPs who accept complementary travel and hospitality offered by third parties must declare it.

[ ‘Hard cash’: Roberta Metsola on Qatargate and how Ukraine transformed the EU ]

But Ms O’Reilly called for a review of these practices as part of the overhaul of standards and rules taking place in the wake of the Qatargate scandal, in which a number of current and former MEPs were arrested and charged in relation to allegations of corruption.

“This is something that needs to be dealt with under these new ethics rules,” she said, suggesting that public attention to the issue will now be greater in the wake of the Qatargate scandal.

“There will be much greater scrutiny on what everybody does, including the MEPs, and I think they’d have to find a very high justification for their flights to be paid for or other hospitality,” she said.

Mr O’Reilly warned that European Parliament president Roberta Metsola appeared to be “under pressure” to soften new anti-corruption reforms that were introduced last week.

A six month “cooling-off period” that is to be mandatory before any former MEP can take up lobbying activities was initially proposed to be two years, Ms O’Reilly said, suggesting the shorter period was insufficient and would undermine the effectiveness of the rule.

“I can’t overemphasise how much trust in administration matters,” she warned. “You cannot have political legitimacy without moral authority. And you know it doesn’t slip away overnight, it slips away over time.”