It did not go unnoticed in the Hungarian media either that Dimitris Avramopoulos is linked to the Qatargate scandal.Continue reading
Hungarian news portal Origo suggests that the former EU migration commissioner involved in the Qatargate scandal, Dimitris Avramopoulos, may have received money from a pro-immigration NGO back when he was criticizing Hungarian border protection and pushing for resettlement quotas.
Fight Impunity, the “NGO” founded by former Italian left-wing MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri, who was arrested in connection with a corruption scandal in Brussels, has paid 60,000 euros to Avramopulos, who became known for his pro-migration policies and Brussels’ mandatory resettlement quotas when he was still EU commissioner, Origo writes.
“There is a suspicion that Avramopoulos may have been paid for his decisions even then. Avramopoulos was most likely paid for his lobbying work for current EU commissioners, but Fight Impunity is not listed in the transparency register of the European Parliament, so the former commissioner could not have lobbied on behalf of the organization,” the article adds.
Origo reports that as EU commissioner for migration, Avramopoulos has made “numerous pro-immigration statements and has confronted the Hungarian government over the imposition of mandatory resettlement quotas.”
Writing in Politico at the very end of 2017, he argued that the migrants who arrived in Europe in the wake of the migration wave that began in 2015, are here to stay, that migration is the new reality that cannot be stopped and must be managed:
It is naïve to think that our societies will remain homogenous and migration-free if one erects fences. (…) At the end of the day, we all need to be ready to accept migration, mobility, and diversity as the new norm and tailor our policies accordingly.”
In another op-ed in 2017, he said that “in order to keep migration under control in the Eastern Mediterranean, it is essential for Hungary to start taking in refugees.”
According to the portal, Avramopoulos falsely claimed in an interview in 2019 that the European Commission had given money to support Hungary’s border protection efforts.
Featured photo via the European Commission