Federica Mogherini swallowed a scandal this week which could well be the plot of one of the detective series that she loves to read so much. The one who was head of European diplomacy between 2014 and 2019 was arrested – only for a few hours – by the Flemish police and last year at the request of the European Tax Authority, which accused her of fraud and corruption in the field of public procurement in the context of her current responsibility as rector of the prestigious Colegio de Europa, based in Witches. The accusation of Mogherini and Stefano Sannino, former secretary general of the European diplomatic services, shook Brussels. The European tax investigation, which points for the first time to the top of the EU architecture, poses another challenge to the credibility of European institutions as they seek to protect themselves from the attacks they receive from inside and outside the EU. But the blow goes further: the investigation also calls into question the reputation of an institution, the Colegio de Europa, which has trained the Brussels elites since the Second World War and puts the complex relationships that unite them back on the table. lobbies and Brussels politicians.
The movement in European institutions that calls several politicians those who wrote this periodical, without giving credit to what happened, is partly due to the fact that Mogherini (Rome, 52 years old) has become one of its illustrious names. burbuja bruxelense. He landed in the Belgian capital in 2014 and from the first moment, the appointments to the positions he held sparked controversy. Always for the same reason: there is a lack of experience. The statement by the then Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, as high representative for foreign policy and security, commonly received among the 28 members of the community. Until then, this social democratic politician and filmmaker had been elected in Italy for six years and Minister of Foreign Affairs in a short period of six months. This baggage was too small for someone who should be able to telephone and speak on behalf of Europe. A veteran of diplomacy recalls that the proposal was widely contested. “The Wrong Election,” headlined an editorial in The World.
While the big capitals doubted Mogherini’s tables, the small Eastern states accused them of being related to the Kremlin. This idea was based on an Italian visit to Russian President Vladimir Putin, when his country in turn held the presidency of the EU. The trip responded to Brussels’ efforts by lowering tensions in the region behind the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula, but the Baltic countries underlined, after this meeting, the privileged relations traditionally maintained by Rome and Moscow and the economic and energy interests of the two countries. “I do not support a pro-Kremlin person,” Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite then decided.
Renzi’s desires, however, ended up being imposed in the most delicate distribution of positions of responsibility within the EU, where Italy has always been able to do well. Mogherini, who embodied his arrival Erasmus generation To the institutions, he addressed all these comments warning against the machismo installed in these accusations. Cleverly, she even remembered that her former boss, Renzi, was younger than her but never doubted her ability to serve as prime minister.
As soon as she arrived in Brussels, the Italian decided to transfer her dispatch from the Servicio Europeo de Acción Outside (SEAE) to the building opposite, the European Commission, of which she was also vice-president. With this gesture, he marked his distance from his predecessor, the British Catherine Ashton, and transmitted the message of his desire to give a single voice to the 28 countries of the EU at the time in an area, in foreign policy, which required the unanimity of all partners. It also stands out for its good relations with other institutions. “It doesn’t matter to spend hours giving explanations to the European Parliament,” said one MP. “We had a lot of people and a great capacity for communication, something that rarely happened,” summarizes another.
His former colleagues, who do not give credence to what happened this week, explain that he had no working hours. Mother of two children, she devotes herself to her work seven days a week. “They were long days, which lasted quietly 15 or 16 hours, with blank nights”, remembers an employee, who insists on asking for caution in the face of the scandal. “She was very scrupulous throughout the trial. This makes me believe that this is a case that involves any type of personal enrichment,” he added.
The deception of the nuclear program
One of the biggest successes of his tenure was the agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, signed in 2015 between Tehran and the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. Mogherini, as coordinator of this group of powers, was the key to a pact that Donald Trump would later dynamite. But the Italian could also taste the bitterness of the profession by having to deal with the war in Syria or the migration crisis at work. And above all not being able to speak for them. His own country, with another political sign, distanced itself from a position that it ended up considering to be of little use to its interests and which required long trips far from the living room where major decisions were taken on a day-to-day basis.
Even though the European Tax Inquiry has nothing to do with this era, it is even better with its second stage. burbuja bruxelense. This period was empathetic since there was no last year when he left his post, which he passed in the Spanish hands of Josep Borrell. Mogherini was proposed to occupy the position of rector of the Colegio de Europa, an institution often compared to the French National School of Administration (ENA) for its vocation of training European elites. Her election was fraught with criticism, public and private, from teachers, students and politicians, who complained of the “lack of academic experience” of an Italian woman with a degree in political science, and of an alleged “friendship” with the president of the commission that was to appoint her, the former president of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy. A group of representatives even denounced a possible “conflict of interest” before the Commission.
Mogherini faced, during his tenure at the head of the Colegio de Europa, the expulsion of a teacher accused of sexual harassment and a complaint from the World Jewish Congress for anti-Semitic paintings on the doors of Jewish students, which is why Mogherini opened an investigation. But no crisis has the dimensions we face today. The flamenco police arrested Mogherini, Sannini and, according to The Republic, to Cesare Zegretti, another management position in the educational institution. Although the EU tax administration is keeping details of the investigation secret, the focus is on awarding the contract to establish the EU Diplomatic Academy in 2021, funded by EU funds to train young diplomats. According to the Italian press, the Fiscalía asked if the conditions of the competitions were filtered at the Colegio de Europa before their official publication.
The news has moved community leaders, who ask for caution but at the same time mark their distance from the accused. The recent scandals linked to alleged bribes linked to the Chinese company Huawei or to the governments of Qatar and Morocco have not yet amplified this new crisis. Some representatives ―always in private― make controversial statements La Stampa of one of the hams involved Qatargateformer vice-president of the European Parliament Eva Kailí, who said that Belgium “is not a safe country for politics”. Others can go with their feet and wait for the results of the investigation. The ultras and Eurosceptic parties, however, are celebrating this imputation as a victory which reaffirms their thesis on the corruption of European politics. For now, Mogherini has resigned from his position and hopes that the justice system will support his management. But European taxation was added on at least one point and apart in his career within it. burbuja bruxelense.
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