Athens, 30 March 2023

Online meeting between Deputy Chairman of European Affairs Committee with Home Affairs Commissioner

The Chairpersons of the European Affairs Committees of the EU Parliaments met, via teleconference, with Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson. The issue on the agenda was: What can further be done both nationally and at EU level in the area of preventing and fighting corruption? The European Affairs Committee was represented by its Deputy Chair Dimitris Kairides, who, upon congratulating the Commissioner on organising the meeting, as well as on her work and the upcoming legislative initiative on the fight against corruption, made special reference to the geostrategic dimension of corruption. He said characteristically that "castles are brought down from within", highlighting the extensive use of every appropriate means by the EU's geostrategic competitors, who, unable to directly hurt the EU, indirectly do so, through the erosion of democratic institutions. He emphasised that all EU member states need to be vigilant against totalitarian regimes trying to hurt the democratic EU from within and turn the citizens against their own institutions. 

The Commissioner agreed fully with Mr Kairides' position and made reference to the ever increasing involvement of organised crime in corruption networks, using the latest technologies, and stressed that the upcoming legislation will complement the mechanisms for the Rule of Law and the European Media Freedom Act. She also urged the representatives of the national parliaments to intensify their effors to both prevent and tackle corruption, especially through the administration of justice, in order not to create in the citizens the feeling that the cases that are brought to light are covered up and the guilty go unpunished. 

 

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