Why a small corruption scandal is a big problem for the EU

On the same day American diplomats sat down with Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss matters of war and peace in Europe, their European counterparts sat down—not entirely voluntarily—for a chat with Belgian police investigators. Oh dear. It was humiliating enough to have been excluded from a five-hour summit between the Russian president and Trumpian envoys on how to end the war in Ukraine; Europe has not thus far managed to convince either America or Russia that it matters enough to be invited to such confabs. But for diplomats in Brussels to be subjected on December 2nd to a police raid on their offices was the icing on the cake. Two Brussels foreign-policy grandees were detained by police, then formally designated as suspects. Federica Mogherini was once the European Union’s foreign-policy chief. Stefano Sannino is one of the European Commission’s most senior officials. Besides denting the EU’s credibility, the allegations of corruption threaten to morph into a serious crisis.

The cronyism being investigated relates to the establishment of an academy for junior diplomats. Much of Europe’s foreign-policy muscle sits at national level, but the EU wants some of its own. Since 2011 the European External Action Service, a name that inaccurately suggests a Brussels version of The Avengers, has served as a sort of proto-foreign ministry. In 2021 the EEAS proposed a training programme to indoctrinate budding national diplomats in putting the European interest first. As it happened, soon after leaving the helm of the EEAS in 2019 Ms Mogherini had been parachuted in to head the College of Europe in Bruges, known as a finishing school for aspiring Eurocrats. A public tender, organised by Ms Mogherini’s former EEAS colleagues, for universities applying to host the diplomatic school seems to have been designed to ensure only the College could plausibly land the contract. In any case, that is how things worked out, and Ms Mogherini now leads the diplomatic school in question.

At this point, these are merely allegations. All the suspects named are presumed innocent, and none have said much publicly. Even if proven, would it amount to world-level corruption? Hardly. Compared to what goes on in Washington these days, tilting the scales so that a publicly funded institution run by a well-regarded insider wins a government contract is peanuts. Per Euractiv, a news site, the allegedly dodgy tender involved less than €1m ($1.16m), and there are no charges of enrichment beyond perhaps a cushy salary. Still, it grates with the desire for honest administration. The EU is a persnickety enforcer of rules on national governments, not least regarding public procurement. For its own staff to have seemingly erred badly enough to attract the attention of prosecutors is, at the very least, both careless and embarrassing.

Such a hiccup would be easily surmountable for an institution otherwise doing a stellar job. Alas, the EEAS is not. The current foreign-policy supremo, Kaja Kallas, took up her post after the events police are investigating, so she is not personally implicated by the current scrutiny. But, like the three predecessors who have held the position since 2009, she rules over a dysfunctional empire. The EU’s 27 national governments jealously guard their right to their own foreign policy—even as they pay lip service to the importance of the bloc speaking with a single voice. The EEAS is thus an institutional chimera, mostly accountable to member states but also linked to the European Commission (of which Ms Kallas, like Ms Mogherini before her, is a vice-president). Nobody has made a success of running it. Brussels cocktail parties have been enlivened of late by talk of a petty turf war pitting Ms Kallas against the commission and its president, Ursula von der Leyen.

The corruption imbroglio comes at an awkward time for the EU’s institutions. A plan first mooted months ago to hand Ukraine around €140bn from a facility backed by frozen Russian assets should have been done and dusted by now. Instead the idea remains mired in uncertainty, awaiting a summit of EU leaders on December 18th. Such prevarication plays into the hands of those in Washington and elsewhere who think Europe a pseudo-power that preaches to others but is incapable of getting stuff done.

For EU officialdom, questions of graft and poor administration have been accumulating of late. A sprawling investigation into alleged bribes paid by Qatar to members of the European Parliament has dragged on for years, albeit with no convictions. Belgian prosecutors in April probed eight people for corruption and other sins as part of an investigation into lobbying by Huawei, a Chinese tech firm—again with no final convictions, and denials of wrongdoing all round. Ms von der Leyen herself was officially found to have broken EU rules by not releasing the contents of text messages she exchanged with the boss of Pfizer, a pharma firm, while negotiating the bloc’s purchase of billions of euros’ worth of covid-19 vaccines in 2021. The episode resulted in an attempt by populist parties in the European Parliament to oust her, a bid that fell well short. There is already muttering of another vote of confidence linked to this latest affair, though it seems no likelier to succeed—not least given the scandal erupted in the EEAS, part of the EU apparatus Ms von der Leyen does not control.

Every time the Eurocracy errs, its opponents cheer. A Russian official crowed that EU officials “prefer to ignore their own problems, while constantly lecturing everyone else”. An apparatchik of Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, whose own government is barred from most EU funding for its dodgy ways, called the Brussels institutions a “mafia” and suggested the EU “looks more like a crime series than a functioning union”. Insiders know that is grossly unfair and that few EU officials are in it for the money. But making that case is getting harder.■