The European Commission is demanding an investigation after Politico in Brussels revealed that the EU executive's top transport official accepted free flights from the Qatari government as his team negotiated a vital air transport deal for the Gulf state's own airline, Qatar Airways.
Henrik Hololei, the director general of the transport department of the European Commission, flew nine times for free in business class with Qatar Airways between 2015 and 2021, according to data obtained by Politico in Brussels.
Six of the free trips took place during the drafting of a deal to open European airspace to Qatar, four of which were paid for by the Doha government or a Qatari-linked group.
Hololei declined to comment on reports from the EU affairs news portal, but a spokesperson for the committee defended the decision of the committee's director-general for mobility policy and transport to accept free flights from Qatar Airways. "All detailed missions (...) were authorized and carried out in accordance with applicable regulations," the spokesman said, adding that any potential conflict of interest had been "carefully considered and ruled out."
It is worth remembering that at the beginning of December, the Belgian police arrested several people on charges of corruption, including Eva Kaili, the then vice-president of the European Parliament. According to the suspicion, the members of the group represented the interests of foreign countries in the board, including Qatar and Morocco, for which they received hundreds of thousands of euros.
After the corruption scandal broke out in Brussels, most ongoing contracts with the Arab country were suspended so that the investigation could find out how many people were involved in the case and how much influence Qatar had.
For some reason, the aviation agreement between the EU and the oil country, which was protected by the European Commission, is an exception to this.
Incidentally, the data sent to Politico in response to a public interest data request by the committee includes all flights of Qatar Airways' senior EU officials working in the transport department between January 1, 2015 and January 1, 2022, a time frame that also includes negotiations on the opening of European airspace to Qatar. The committee was commissioned to develop the deal in June 2016 and signed the final agreement in October 2021.
The full article of Magyar Nemzet can be read here.
Image: Henrik Hololei, European Commission Director-General for Mobility Policy and Transport in Qatar (Source: Capa Center for Aviation)
