Dimitris Avramopoulos has asked Greece’s Supreme Court to throw out the European arrest warrant issued against him by Belgian authorities, filing an appeal with the court’s prosecutor’s office that challenges the warrant’s legal validity.

According to available information on the filing, Avramopoulos disputes the lawfulness of the warrant and maintains that he has committed no criminal offense. His central argument is procedural. He contends that the document does not clearly set out the time, place and circumstances of the acts attributed to him, even though, under both Greek and European law, those details are a necessary condition for a warrant to be valid. He also argues that the warrant fails to adequately identify the national judicial decision or domestic warrant on which it was based, as required by the applicable legal framework.

What the warrant is about

The warrant stems from Qatargate, the corruption scandal that erupted at the European Parliament in late 2022 over allegations that Gulf states paid for influence in Brussels. Belgian prosecutors issued the European arrest warrant over Avramopoulos’s role in Fight Impunity, the NGO at the center of the affair. A former EU migration commissioner who now sits as a lawmaker for the governing New Democracy party, Avramopoulos faces a possible charge of participating in a criminal organization. He denies the allegations.

Belgian authorities moved to issue the warrant after Avramopoulos twice declined summonses to give his account. He has insisted his monthly fee from the NGO was declared, taxed and approved by Brussels, and has said he was cleared in 2022, a claim the European Commission disputes, saying it conducted routine checks rather than an investigation.

The Greek government has sought to project impartiality, stressing that the warrant was forwarded within 24 hours and that no one receives special treatment.