The sudden reappearance of Qatargate in Greek politics has caught the government off guard, after Belgian prosecutors decided to issue a european arrest warrant for Dimitris Avramopoulos, the former European commissioner for migration who now sits in parliament as a New Democracy MP.

News of the warrant, which has been issued as part of their continuing investigation into the corruption scandal that has dogged the European Parliament since 2022, broke on Monday afternoon. In the first hours after it emerged, government officials offered no comment. According to reporting the prime minister’s office was eventually in contact with the sitting MP for the necessary consultations and explanations, before Avramopoulos issued a lengthy statement of his own.

For now, the prime minister’s office is leaning on that statement rather than commenting itself. Avramopoulos, who represents the Ilia constituency in the Peloponnese, has stuck to the position he took when the investigation first began: that every action he took was legal and approved by the European Commission. He added that he would ask for his parliamentary immunity to be lifted and would turn to the Greek judiciary himself. The former commissioner, who held the migration portfolio from 2014 to 2019, described the involvement of his name by the Belgian authorities as arbitrary, unacceptable and suspect.

Opposition fire

The case drew quick attacks from the opposition, with the prime minister’s office still pointing to Avramopoulos’s own account rather than offering one of its own.

There is no sign, so far, that any of this threatens his spot on the New Democracy ticket. If anything, he may be about to switch terrain: one scenario doing the rounds in recent weeks, but not yet confirmed, has him running in Athens A’ rather than Ilia, his Peloponnese district, where he was reelected in 2023, months after Qatargate first broke. Under the Greek system, voters mark a preference for individual candidates within a party list, so which district a politician chooses is itself a calculation.

“It never concerned me”

The warrant concerns Avramopoulos’s role at Fight Impunity, the NGO founded by Pier Antonio Panzeri, the former member of the European Parliament who was arrested and has been a central figure in the Qatargate scandal. The charge the ND MP appears to face is taking part in a criminal organization, with authorities linking the case to the income he received from the NGO, according to a senior Greek official. At the time Avranopoulos sat on the NGO’s board as an honorary member and resigned as soon as the scandal became public.

The former Commissioner stated that his work with Fight Impunity was entirely legal, audited, approved, declared and taxed. He went on to deny any involvement, direct or indirect, in anything improper. According to Politico Belgian authorities had asked the former commissioner to testify last year, but he did not respond. In his statement, Avramopoulos said: “This case never had anything to do with me.” The issue “that was attempted to be linked to my name,” he said, “was closed three years ago, with full institutional transparency and the seal of approval from the European Commission, following a decision signed by its president, Ursula von der Leyen.” Any attempt by the Belgian authorities to reopen it and tie his name to Fight Impunity, “whether through baseless allegations or the distortion of facts,” was “arbitrary, unacceptable, suspicious” and would “be met with every legal means available.”

Immunity request reaches the justice ministry

The first move will be lifting Avramopoulos’s immunity, which he is expected to request from his fellow lawmakers on the floor of parliament. He said that although the case was baseless, he would not hide behind any immunity. Instead, he would take the matter to the Greek courts himself and ask them to investigate it fully and rule on it.

The scandal first surfaced in December 2022, by which point Avramopoulos had already left the Commission. Belgian police searched homes and offices around Brussels and turned up large sums of cash, in what Politico called “one of the biggest corruption investigations to hit the EU.” At its core is the suspicion that people connected to the European Parliament were paid, in cash or favors, to advance Qatar’s agenda. Panzeri was arrested, as were former PASOK lawmaker Eva Kaili, a European Parliament vice president at the time, and her husband, Francesco Giorgi. The three are accused of corruption, money laundering and membership in a criminal organization. They have been released pending trial, with no indication when it will take place and almost no developments since their release.

Source: Ta Nea