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FIDESZ MEP CALLS FOR 'COMPREHENSIVE CHANGES ON EU CORRUPTION'

 

Next year’s European parliamentary elections will give an opportunity for “comprehensive changes” in handling corruption in Brussels, an MEP of ruling Fidesz said on Wednesday. Speaking on the sidelines of an EP plenary session, Balázs Hidvéghi told Hungarian reporters that Hungary supported all EU measures to fight corruption. “It seems absurd, however, that the European Commission should propose new anti-graft measures, partly against third countries, and dangle the possibility of sanctions even as it has failed so far to disclose the most severe internal corruption scandal of its history,” he said. Besides the corruption scandal in the European Parliament, which was made public in December, “unacceptable practices were also detected” in the European Commission, Hidvéghi said. At the same time, the discoveries have brought no internal investigation or accountability, he added. “We can’t expect the politicians who participated in and operated this network to own up to their deeds,” he said. But institutional efforts in the EU are also directed at downplaying smoothing over corruption in the EU, and to represent them as individual mistakes, he said. While anti-corruption measures are important, the EP should first clear up, adhere to and enforce its own internal regulations, he said. Further anti-graft legislation and the sanctioning of third countries should only come after, he said.