 |
By ELISA BRAUN
Tips, tales, traumas to @ElisaBraun or influence@politico.eu | View in your browser
BONJOUR. I’m writing this from the Palace of Justice in Brussels, which has been covered in scaffolding for 40 years — something that’s either seen as evidence of a crumbling justice system or merely Belgian surrealism (especially now that some people are fighting to keep the scaffolding as a permanent feature).
I’m waiting for the suspects in Qatargate whose legal teams will once again attempt to disrupt the case by asking niche procedural questions. It reminds me of my conversation with Christian, who has owned the vintage-looking newspaper kiosk in the majestic hall for 21 years. This charming man has a rule: criminals, innocents, lawyers, police officers, and even journalists are all treated the same, even if they’re up to no good. That is, with a warm smile and a good coffee.
Christian may believe that everyone should be treated equally but the Belgian justice system doesn’t appear to believe the same thing. Some of those involved in the biggest corruption scandal to ever hit the European Parliament will never be properly investigated after the Belgian authorities confirmed to Le Soir that they had struck a deal with Morocco that will pass part of the case to Rabat.
The Belgian Ministry of Justice said the Morocco move was an “independent decision by the federal prosecutor’s office”, with a reminder that there is a “separation of powers.”
It comes months after we made it public that Belgian authorities had already struck a similar arrangement with Qatar to lift the arrest warrant issued for one of its ministers. I’ll stick with the coffees and warm smiles.
Here’s what we’re talking about this week:
— The founder of a consultancy who’s now running for Le Pen’s party
— How Estonia acted as a lobbyist for a tech company
— Who’s the EU fraud leader?
LOOKING FORWARD TO A FAR-RIGHT WIN?
EU lobbyist running for Le Pen: Arnaud Dassier, one of the founders of the consultancy Avisa Partners — now rebranded as Forward Global and with bases in Paris, Brussels, London and Washington — announced this week that he is running for a seat in the French parliament for the far right in the snap election called by Emmanuel Macron. This is one of the first moves of its kind from a member of the French financial establishment — and from a European lobbyist with a presence in the Brussels bubble, qui plus est!
But It won’t be the last, Dassier told us over the phone, adding that Marine Le Pen had received many signs of support from French CEOs who will soon join the National Rally’s ranks.
‘That’s democracy’: “We do politics, people vote, that’s democracy, and you have to know how to work with it. Our friends in Brussels need to get out of their bubble a bit and learn to work with people, including those who don’t 100 percent share their conception of European integration,” Dassier said to those who claimed to be shocked by his move, including former colleagues who have called him. Funnily enough, Dassier had previously worked with Le Pen’s far-right enemy Eric Zemmour.
Looking backwards. Dassier stepped down from his role as an executive at Avisa/Forward last year, after reports that the company was under the spotlight from French authorities over long-standing accusations of manipulating information in France and working for authoritarian regimes. The company itself told POLITICO last April that it suspected it was the victim of a smear campaign and asked police to investigate. The company has also sued media companies that investigated its activities for defamation but has since withdrawn all its complaints.
Is the move awkward for Forward? Dassier “is no longer a partner or shareholder in the company, his political involvement no longer concerns Forward,” said Guillaume Didier, president of Forward Global in Paris after we reached out to some of his colleagues. Didier added that the company was focused on its future after getting a new backer on board, private equity fund Bridgepoint, and seeking to develop its international activities, potentially with new acquisitions.
Friends in high places. While a relatively new player in town, Forward has managed to get clients that include the European External Action Service, with whom it has a €3.6 million contract to provide a ‘strategic foresight hub’.
The goss: Asked about the move by Dassier, a competitor of Forward in Brussels who declined to be named for obvious reasons said he found it “very entertaining.”
“This is not the year that I’d be running for LR!” he added jokingly, a reference to the struggling French conservative Les Républicains — who have partially teamed up with Le Pen.
ESTONIA 🤝🏻 BOLT
OOPS THEY DID IT AGAIN. Why does Estonia keep vetoing a deal that would force tech platforms to pay more in sales tax?
The Baltic country is holding up an agreement that will be discussed by the EU’s finance ministers on Friday, my colleague Gregorio Sorgi found out, and is pushing to make a key plank of the legislation optional because that would make life difficult for its businesses, the country argues. EU diplomats hinted to Gregorio that the country’s stance is influenced by years of lobbying by its national champion, Bolt (the mobility company).
We’ve been here before: It’s not the first time the country has acted as a de facto lobbyist for Bolt, my colleague Pieter Haeck, who’s covered them for years, told me. Estonia was one of the last hold-outs when the Belgian Council presidency sought support for its deal on the EU’s gig working rules. Those rules aimed to settle once and for all the job status of Uber drivers and food delivery couriers, a decision that would heavily impact Bolt.
Winning partnership. Bolt’s lobbyists were ever-present before and during the entire handling of the file (more than 2.5 years) thanks to a classic coalition strategy with other key players. The company is a member of Move EU, a ride-hailing lobby group with only three members (Uber and FreeNow being the other two), and of Delivery Platforms Europe, a food delivery-focused lobby group.
Admittedly, it was successful. The Belgians already had to heavily water down the text because of French opposition and German inconclusiveness (in such a way that EU countries now have a lot of leeway to chart the course themselves) and even then, Estonia only backed the deal at the very last minute.
Throughout the bitter fight over the bill, some alleged that Bolt had too close ties with the Estonian government. Corporate Europe Observatory, which got hold of a series of internal documents, alleged that Bolt once drafted a letter in the name of the Estonian government to oppose the direction of travel of the rules, which the government could handily sign and send out. Estonia eventually did not consider it necessary to join the letter Bolt proposed, a spokesperson from the country said.
Oh, another detail. Martin and Markus Villig, the two brothers who own Bolt, have donated more than €220,000 between them to Estonian political parties in recent years, according to the public database of Estonia’s Political Party Funding Supervision Committee (ERJK).
Estonia’s take: “We have indeed been in communication with entrepreneurs (including Bolt) regarding the platform/gig work directive,” said a spokesperson from Estonia’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications. “Communication with interest groups is part of the democratic decision-making process and during negotiations,” the spokesperson said, adding that all the meetings with interest representatives were shared transparently with the world.
Bolt’s take: The company told us that it “engages with stakeholders on the EU legislative files related to issues that affect our operations, customers or partners as evidenced by our registration in the EU Transparency Registry.” It added that: “As detailed in the Political Parties Act, any private individual can donate to a political party in Estonia and all received donations are transparently and regularly reported to a monitoring institution.”
OLAF POINTS FINGERS AT EEAS, COMMISSION AND PARLIAMENT
WHO’S THE EU FRAUD LEADER? The EU’s anti-fraud agency OLAF focused a lot of its attention in 2023 on European diplos and officials from the EEAS, the Commission and the Parliament, according to its annual report.
Who would have thought? That’s no surprise as those institutions hire a lot of people, which naturally leads to a lot of potential cases. But it’s worth noting that those investigations included the abuse of diplomatic privilege by staff in an EU delegation, inappropriate behavior by senior staff members in an EU agency, and “an incredible case” of how an individual created a web of corruption, lining his pockets in the process, the report says.
 |
NEW CLUBS IN TOWN
APA’S UNITED. Now that a new European Parliament has been elected, around 2,000 parliamentary assistants find themselves on the job market — and Flavien Deltort, an APA himself, thought he could do something about it with ExPert Europe. The platform aims to connect these professionals with the thousands of lobby shops as well as universities, local bodies, and other organizations across the EU that are looking for experts in European affairs, according to a statement.
FOI FANS CLUB. For those not familiar with the acronym, Freedom Of Information requests are those annoying emails sent by journalists — and lobbyists!— in order to get hold of documents from the EU institutions. Our colleagues Jean Comte from MLex and Alexander Fanta from Follow The Money are creating a network for those who keep sending out FOIs. Their goal: defend the right to transparency and potentially improve it.
Commission, be warned. “We are especially eager to talk with the EU Commission, which has taken over the last years a very restrictive view on access to documents — with numerous negative answers, and also very long delays in answering (up to more than one year in some cases) that are enough to kill potential stories (as noted by the EU Ombudswoman last year),” Jean told me via email. Potential members could also contribute to the future access to documents regulation, expected in the next term, they hope. Reach out to Alex or Jean directly if you want to be part of the adventure.
DALLIGATE
EX-OLAF CHIEF’S LEGAL REPRIEVE. Giovanni Kessler, a former boss at the EU’s anti-fraud agency, who left OLAF in 2017, heard from the Brussels Court of Appeal on Wednesday that he would no longer have to serve a one-year suspended prison sentence over his handling of a probe involving John Dalli, who was EU health commissioner, according to court documents seen by POLITICO.
What the court said: The sentence was deemed “too severe” as “the evidence to which the court has had access does not allow it to conclude that the accused’s actions were dictated by any intentions other than to perform the duties of his office.” The court however confirmed the basis of the previous ruling, stating that OLAF’s former boss illegally taped a European Commissioner as part of an investigation. Another part of the ruling confirmed that Kessler’s actions prejudiced Dalli.
Dalligate reminder: Maltese politician Dalli resigned in October 2012 amid allegations that his top aide sought bribes from the tobacco industry. Dalli has vociferously proclaimed his innocence, pointing to poorly executed and politically motivated work from Kessler. Kessler told POLITICO in September that he had “always operated transparently and with the aim of finding the truth on [the] allegation, which was a very serious allegation.”
“It’s the positive end for me of a 10-year-long procedure,” Kessler said over the phone.
A spokesperson for Dalli said the ex-Commissioner “is still reading the judgment” and added that “Kessler’s sentence was reduced as a quid pro quo for his admission of fault, from what Mr Dalli understands.”
ICYMI
AVOID PROSECUTION … BECOME AN MEP! The European Parliament will soon welcome the former CEO of Poland’s largest oil company, Orlen, which is facing mounting investigations over its conduct during Daniel Obajtek’s six-year reign. Obajtek denies wrongdoing but observers say charges could be filed imminently, my colleagues Victor Jack and Wojciech Kość write in to report. As a newly elected MEP, Obajtek now enjoys immunity from prosecution.
THE THINGS YOU DO FOR LOVE (OF POWER). My colleague Clothilde Goujard landed a massive accountability scoop this week after finding out that in the race to get reelected, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has kept a lid on open criticism of the Italian government’s crackdown on media freedom. Read her story here.
NOT SO META. Meta’s (former) top Brussels-based lobbyist Aura Salla and Meta’s product counsel Dóra Dávid are now MEPs. Should they be allowed anywhere near tech files? That’s a yes for Green MEP Anna Cavazzini, but with one condition: They must “absolutely get rid of any connections,” she told our Mathieu Pollet during a POLITICO event. “You cannot forbid them to work on the files,” she added.
HEADLINES
— The Steinmetz scandals (OCCRP)
— Bogus thinktanks and transparency evasion at the European Parliament (The Parliament)
— Dubaï Papers: les 28 millions d’euros suspects ont atterri chez ING Belgique… à Dubaï (La Libre)
— How a network of nonprofits enriches fundraisers while spending almost nothing on its stated causes (Pro Publica)
INFLUENCERS
PUBLIC AFFAIRS
— Kreab Brussels Managing Partner Karl Isaksson has been promoted to Kreab Worldwide CEO.
— Kreab Worldwide has also launched a permanent presence in Ukraine by appointing Tetiana Miskova as senior adviser in Kyiv.
— mci group Belgium announced the acquisition of ESN, a communications agency.
— Zuzana Púčiková, former EVBox, Uber and Volt Slovakia co-president (and also an ex-MEP candidate for Volt), is joining Acumen Public Affairs as head of tech.
— Ruud Wassen was appointed as chief client officer at Burson. He will work closely with Burson teams, particularly in the sustainability and healthcare sectors. He previously held senior leadership positions at Teneo, where he established the Brussels office, and also led the energy practice at Burson-Marsteller.
— Dimitri Banas has been promoted to head of technology and digital economy, joining the leadership team of Burson Brussels.
ENERGY
— Alicja Krzemień of the Central Mining Institute (GIG-PIB), a national research institute in Poland, was elected as the first female president of the European Association for Coal and Lignite (EURACOAL).
— Jacek Kaczorowski, president of the management board at PGE GiEK, was elected as a vice president at EURACOAL.
INDUSTRY
— Mario Jorge Machado, president of the Textile and Clothing Association of Portugal (ATP), was elected president of EURATEX on June 14.
THINK TANKS
— Nikolaus Lang, a managing director and senior partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), will be the first chair of the Center for Geopolitics that BCG is launching.
DIPLOMACY
— Ingeborg Bennink has started as EU project advisor at Cities Northern Netherlands. She was previously with BCW Brussels.
SUSTAINABILITY
— Gian Marco Gioffrè started as an adviser in sustainability for WindEurope. He was previously with CINEA.
Special thanks to: Gian Volpiccelli, for gracefully replacing me at the last minute after my bike accident last week, Jacopo Barigazzi, Pieter Haeck, Gregorio Sorgi, Matthieu Pollet, Clothilde Goujard, Ketrin Jochecová for the tips and expertise, Giulia Poloni, my editor Paul Dallison, and Françoise Hardy for making my mom sing.
WATCHDOG
— Jonas Grimheden, head of the fundamental rights office at Frontex, announced his candidacy for the post of European Ombudsman.
CORRECTION: This article has been updated to correct Arnaud Dassier’s former role at Forward.
SUBSCRIBE to the POLITICO newsletter family: Brussels Playbook | London Playbook | London Playbook PM | Playbook Paris | EU Election Playbook | Berlin Playbook | Global Playbook | POLITICO Confidential | Sunday Crunch | EU Influence | London Influence | Digital Bridge | China Watcher | Berlin Bulletin | D.C. Playbook | D.C. Influence | All our POLITICO Pro policy morning newsletters