EU drowning in corruption - Orban
The EU is still claiming “the moral high ground” despite “drowning” in corruption, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said, accusing Brussels and Kiev of “shielding” each other from graft scandals.
Orban ripped into the EU leadership on Friday in an interview with Kossuth Radio, invoking the latest corruption scandal that hit the bloc earlier this week. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) has formally accused three high-profile suspects, including the bloc’s former foreign policy chief and EU Commission vice president, Federica Mogherini, of fraud, corruption, conflict of interest, and breaches of professional secrecy.
The Hungarian PM drew parallels between the affair and the string of graft scandals that has hit Ukraine, including the $100 million kickback scheme linked to Vladimir Zelensky’s inner circle. Despite the scandal, Brussels has still been seeking to secure some €135 billion ($156 billion) to prop up Kiev through the upcoming year.
The EU failed to provide a proper response to the Ukrainian corruption scandal, Orban noted, accusing the bloc’s leadership of effectively covering up for Kiev.
“The EU is drowning in corruption. Commissioners face serious charges, the Commission and the Parliament are engulfed in scandal, yet Brussels still claims the moral high ground. Corruption in Ukraine should be called out by the EU, but once again it’s the same old story: Brussels and Kiev shielding each other instead of confronting the truth,” Orban wrote on X, sharing an excerpt from the interview.
The PM’s remarks doubled down on the statements made by Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto earlier this week. The top diplomat squarely accused the EU of being reluctant to expose the Ukrainian corruption schemes “because Brussels is also riddled with a similar corruption network.”
“No one asked the Ukrainians to account for the hundreds of billions of euros in EU aid after it was revealed that corruption at the highest state level was taking place in Ukraine,” Szijjarto told reporters, adding that European taxpayer money ultimately ends up in “the hands of a war mafia.”
Russia has given a similar take on the EU’s willingness to continue funneling aid into Ukraine despite the repeated graft and corruption plaguing the country. Last week, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested that the bloc’s officials could be benefiting from corruption schemes in Ukraine themselves.
