Pirate Senator Lukáš Wagenknecht filed a lawsuit with the European Court of Justice against the European Council. It calls on the European Council to establish rules on conflict of interest for Member States‘ presidents and prime ministers. “The European Council is the EU’s highest and politically strongest institution, but the only one that has no conflict of interest rules in place. Presidents and prime ministers of EU countries can thus personally enrich themselves by voting at the European Council. This is the case of Czech Prime Minister Babiš. He represents the Czech Republic at the European Council and can also co-decide, for example, on the amount of direct agricultural payments that receives the Agrofert holding from which the Prime Minister has personal profit. The solutions offered are the replacement of Prime Minister Babiš at the European Council meetings by the Czech President Zeman, or the immediate cessation of all subsidies from the EU budget, including the so-called direct payments for the Agrofert holding controlled by Babiš. If Babiš voted to adopt or change the parameters of the future EU seven-year budget, it would be approved in violation of European law and this budget adoption could be invalidated,” Wagenknecht describes.
In order not to have the future seven-year European budget for 2021-2027 annulled and having to operate under the provisional budgetary regime, Pirate senator Wagenknecht has repeatedly called on the European Council to deal with the conflict of interests of Andrej Babiš. Unfortunately, the European Council has not yet taken any action on this matter. “The European Council does not have its own rules on conflict of interest and has not given a clear opinion on whether it will adopt them in the future. As a result of the conflict of interest identified by the European Commission and the European Parliament at the end of 2018, only a resignation of Prime Minister Babiš from the Czech government’s auxiliary advisory body, the ESIF Council, was made on the recommendation of Commissioner Oettinger. This resignation did not remove his conflict of interest with respect to the European budget. Prime Minister Babiš continues to vote in the Czech government on the final destination of national and European funds, prepares a so far unpublished plan for future national investments and participates in the preparation of the European budget. Andrej Babiš continues to act in the European Council on issues relating to the future EU budget or final destination of funds flowing from the EU budget,” says Wagenknecht.
Wagenknecht stresses that the European Council has not yet addressed the conflict of interest issue. It does not act to fulfil its obligation under Article 325 (1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, since it has not taken measures against conflict of interest. It also does not combat activities negatively affecting the financial interests of the European Union as it is obliged under that article: ‚Conflict of interest measures apply at national, national, regional and local level. An exclusion of a person with a conflict of interest is the absolute basis of any democratic decisionmaking. It is unacceptable that this rule would not work at the highest level of EU political decision-making,” says the pirate senator.
Senator Wagenknecht fears that the failure of the European Council to act on the conflict of interests of Prime Minister Babiš could block the approval of the future seven-year budget of the Union. “Problems of Mr. Babiš with his conflict of interests, which burden the Czech Republic, are being transferred to the international level. It is more than unfortunate that he favours his own profit over the interests of all EU citizens. I hope that my action will help prevent problems that all EU Member States could have because of Andrej Babiš,” adds Wagenknecht.
Wagenknecht asks the European Court of Justice for a declaration of inaction of the European Council on conflicts of interest with the hope that the European Council would subsequently take appropriate measures to prevent conflict of interest of prime ministers and presidents of Member States attending European Council meetings, including the Czech prime minister. Last year, the European Parliament and the European Commission have already decided that a conflict of interest of the Czech Prime Minister Mr. Andrej Babiš with respect to the EU budget indeed exists. According to Wagenknecht, there are several possible solutions to conflict of interest at the European Council of Babiš:
- the replacement of Prime Minister Babiš as the Czech Republic’s representative at the meetings of the European Council, where the EU budget will be discussed, by the Czech president Milos Zeman, who is not in conflict of interest in relation to the EU budget, or
- the immediate cessation of all subsidies from the EU budget, including the so-called direct payments for the Babiš-controlled holding Agrofert and their reimbursement as of 2 August 2018, when a stricter ban on conflicts of interest began to apply at EU level.